I cant claim this as mine, but here is a good post on the THEORY of Estopple and debt collection: Englehardt v. Gravens (This is the case that the so called estoppel letters refer to) is an old Western District of Missouri case and deals with a 25 wide strip of roadway giving access across Graven's lands and is/was the only access to Englehardt's property. Gravens had promised not to shut the roadway off but one day he put up a fence across it thereby denying Englehardt's access to the property whereupon Englehardt sued Gravens under the doctrine of estoppel. There isn't one shred of evidence that John Gliha who first came up with that case and used it in making his so called estoppel letter claiming that it somehow related to debt collection. In fact, if you shepardize the case you will quickly find that no attorney anywhere has ever used that case in reference to any debt collection issue while about 25 or 30 have referenced it in insurance and real estate cases. I believe that although there are very few competent consumer attorneys in the U.S. today surely at least one of the better ones out there would have used that case if it had any relevancy to debt collection since the number of situations which would merit it's use are legion. Creditnetters bit hard on John Gliha's junk letters years ago when ***** first falsely introduced them as being of his own authorship. I jumped his case about that when I first got on creditnet and I believe that the posts where I did that may still exist on creditnet to this day although they may have fallen off by now due to pruning. After days of doing bitter battle with ***** he finally admitted that he had plagerized John's "million dollar validation letter" and his estoppel letter. Of course, ****** just had to embellish the validation letter so that it had about 12 or 16 dumb questions instead of the original 8 or so. I've long maintained that estoppel has no relevance in debt collection as used in the Gliha letter and there are tons of posts both on this board and on my blog on the subject. To bring the matter to a head quickly here, estoppel can be likened to a 3 legged table each leg being critical since absent one of the legs the table falls over. Here are the 3 legs. 1. Party A must make some statement or perform some action. 2. upon which Party B relies 3. Which later turns out to be to his detriment. Now then, Let us assume that silence is an action. It is in fact a deliberate action in the case of debt collectors who consciously ignore such letters with good reason. Now then, let us assume that the debtor sends a demand for validation which the debt collector fails to comply with. There is your action and leg #1 is complete. The debtor ostensibly relies on the collector to supply the demanded validation. Leg #2 is complete. But the table falls over on leg #3 because the collector's silence benefits the debtor or at least it does him no harm. So if anyone can make a valid case for the estoppel letter in terms of debt collection issues I'd sure like to hear about it. ***** is the name of a current creditnet member. I DID NOT post the members name to avoid conflict
Hi Hiding, The posters name is BBauer, and is no longer a "current" member. Moreover, his argument has already been handled. Engelhardt v Gravens is a "Promissory Estoppel" case. Applicable only when a promise is made, relied upon, to the detriment of the person who relied upon it (the promise), after acting on same. Example: CA promises to delete TL if you pay, so you pay. CA MUST follow through on their promise. Most Debt Collection cases would use the doctrine of Estoppel by Silence, although admittedly on rare occasions. 2 entirely different doctrines. --> What Is Estoppel .
Hey Butch, I hate to start these "obscure" conversations, but I am wondering if you have found a true Estoppel by silence case at least remotely related to debt collection? I have seen several posts about "that damn collection agency said they would request the tradeline be deleted, but they keep verifying it" BUT HERE IS AN INTERESTING COMMENT> What happens if the collection agency ACTUALLY DID REQUEST DELETION. WHO is ultimately responsible for the deletion? Could the consumer "team up" with the collection agency to sue the reporting agency? And unless the consumer disputed the account with the reporting agency, how would you sue ? One reason I ask, I sued Macys for not updating a tradeline. I won of course, twice actually, but what was kinda disturbing to me, and luckily they failed to present it in court, was the fact they actually provided me with a copy of the Universal Data Form which was sent to the CRA updating the account as I had requested. In hind site, I think that if they would have presented this, the judge would have dismissed my claim as "wrong defendent" and I probably would have to had sued the CRA. "Close calls" like that, is part of the reason I have spent so much time researching this stuff Like we have argued before, yeah it worked!, but it was WAY from legal lol
Nope, it wasn't BBauer. Bill always gives credit to John Gilha (everyone else too) for his work. Sassy
EDITED for funky double post and to add: It wasn't only Gilha's work though, it was Kielsky's as well. ****** is indeed still a member. Nodding and flying with ya there. And if that's Bill above, you should credit him too, BUT he's only referring to one letter, there's a series and others. The archives are an incredible resource ;-) Sassy
