Ok here is the deal, I have a medical debt collection agency that appeared on my bureaus. I recently received a collection letter from them, I sent them a validation request letter, they responded with a set of photo copied documents, none of which were signed by myself. I sent them a 2nd letter satating this is not acceptable to me. Time passed, i had not heard a word, then today i get a summons to appear in court. The second letter was signed for on 11/07/03. per the FTC staff opinion letter by Attorney John F LeFevre medical collectors are subject to the same guidlines as all other collectors per the FDCPA section 809(b) I have a buddy that is helping me through cleaning up my credit, He says i should file a counter claim agains the debt collector and the attorney handling their case. He also says that I can receive up to $1000.00 from the debt collector and another from the attorney for violating my rights as a consumer and violating the FDCPA. Can anyone offer some insight on this?
1st of all, when you sue or are being sued, be very careful in how you do things. how much is the debt for and how old is it?
The summons says 153.00 plus pre-judgement interest from date of service of 12/05/1999 attorney fees in the amount of $0.00 plus post judgement interest against defendants and court costs in the sum of 44.00 Another thing i failed to mention is my ex wife from 1994 is also on the summons, I have not seen from her for almost 8 years. Maybe these are her debts? How do i know, i didnt get any signed libility forms from the collector.
so roughly $200? since your wife is listed they cannot recover more/less than 50% or whatever the judge feels are accurate percentages of liability. keep accurate records of everyone and everything. bring everything to court with you because if you show up they cannot get a default judgment and what they have doesnt sound like proof its yours. more likely if you get sent to mediation before going in front of the judge (which happens where i am from) they will want to negotiate a settlement. this means they have no evidence because they were hoping you wouldn't show up and get a default. all you would need to do is say "not mine, here is what they sent for proof" - THEY have to prove its yours, not you having to prove its not.
so does this sound like a clear cut case on my behalf? what do you think about this counter claim deal? my buddy says that i will need to go in there an quote cases from previous indiana court rulings and FDCPA statutes . What do you think? He also said something about filing a "Discovery" He didnt have time to go into detail with it, so I would like to know if anyone has any knowledge about that as well
oops my last post was kind of bad. here is what i meant to say: they cannot recover more than 50% from you unless the judge says so. i can't believe they are going to sue you over this amount - that is less than what they are paying their attorney to go. (i pay mine $250/hour) tell them you'll settle for $50 - that is 50% of what they could collect from you.
I called the attorney and his secretary said all they have is an itemization from from collector So as far as i know they dont have proof
my thought was the time/effort in having to do this. if i had to take a half day off work ($120.00) plus drive to the court house, etc, etc, etc... it wouldn't be worth it to me. of course, demand in writing that they won't sell off the balance, and no record of collection shall appear on your credit reports. i once offered a collector 10% ($10) and they took it.
Great advice, jen! and...what is amazing to me is that they are willing to spend what, a quarter of what they are suing for in order to collect on $200? That makes a little sense to me as a cost in doing business, however what will it cost in the long run with the fact that they will more than likely have to pay at least a $1000 fine for being ignorant LOL I love it! AND!!! I do agree with jen that they are probably hoping for a default judgment, thinking the average consumer knows not a thing about creditor/debtor rights! I would not doubt it that this CA does not know what is about to hit 'em! THey are probabaly banking on the thought that this "default" judgment will sit on this CR and rack up 24.99% interest every year! FOOLS! Follow the advice on this board; there are alot of experienced people here.
that whole HIPPAA etc crap comes into play of what the OC can legally provide as proof to the CA. george - would you recommend getting proof from the OC?
HIPPAA? what is HIPPAA And thank you all for taking the time to reply!!! Do any of you have any advice i could use in court?
that sounded bad - sorry doing a bunch of things at once. what i meant was that unless you feel your medical privacy was invaded, don't worry about it.
