A law firm that is trying to collect from me says that I owe on a judgment that is several years old. I asked the firm to provide me with a copy of the judgment, as I do not ever recall seeing this.. They tell me that they don't have a copy of the paperwork, that I should contact the court. Shouldn't this be their responsibility, as they are trying to collect from me??
If they are acting as a third-party debt collector (for the court or the plaintiff) then they need to follow the FDCPA: provide required notices, validate the debt, etc. Demand validation pursuant to 15 U.S.C. 1692g. To validate, however, they have to either send you a copy of the judgement or the name and the address of the creditor per 15 U.S.C. 1692g(b). If you demand validation within 30 days of their first contact, they can't continue collection activity until they have sent that to you. So, demand validation, keep notes, and see if they give you a reason to file an FDCPA suit. If they haven't informed you of your rights under 15 U.S.C. 1692g(a) within 5 days of their first contact, then they've already violated the FDCPA.
I asked them to validate the debt, and their first response was "the time for contesting has passed." I responded, saying I am not contesting, I am asking to see the judgment.. They told me the creditor, but will not provide anything else, telling me to contact the court..
I dunno, sounds like a violation from here, if it's the first time you've talked to this attorney, but I'm going out of my "comfort zone" here. My guess would be that the FDCPA "clock" would start ticking with your first contact with this particular attorney. If you had no knowledge of this judgement until this attorney contacted you, that would be clear. If you knew about this judgement but this attorney was recently hired to collect on the judgement, then you might have some FDCPA leverage (not that the attorney would admit that to you). If they gave you the name and address of the OC, then they've met the validation requirement of the FDCPA. However, in this case, I think they still need to send you the required disclaimers and rights/options within the first 5 days. OTOH, if this attorney has been working for the OC for a while, and they were the ones who filed suit and got the judgement and you talked to them back then during the course of that suit, then it would seem like "first contact" happened a long time ago and your FDCPA protection would be more limited in terms of validation.
I don't know, because I don't know about the judgment.. I am merely asking to see the papers from the court... I am sure there is something saying (if) there is a judgement, when it was entered etc... Shouldn't they at least be required to show me that?
Should and Must are two different things. They should be able to give you the case or docket number of the case that resulted in the judgement and the court it was in. If not, then they are just harrassing you. (It's like 7-10 digits, how hard could it be?) With the court and docket number you can call the clerk and ask for a copy of the judgement. Some courts have all this online. So, I don't think they have to give this to you, but if they want to be obnoxious, tell them that if they can't give it to you it must be because it doesn't exist and they can stop with the telephone harassment right now before you report them to the police.
Most comments here are correct but before you start trying to hassle them back why not call up the clerk of the court and ask if you have a judgment on your public record? Easy to do and they will usually tell you right on the phone. If there is one ask when it was entered. Then if it is several years old check your state statute of limitations on judgments. Some states are down as low as 5 years and others 20 years or more. If there is a local judgment then you might want to go down to the clerk of the court and pull a copy of the paperwork in the file and check it over to see whether it is a valid judgment or whether it is a void judgment. Must likely it is void ab initio due for several reasons and therefore possibly vacatable as a void judgment. Fighting void judgments isn't an easy task by any means no matter how many errors it might have but it can be done. If there is no judgment in your local court system then call up the lawyer and tell him that you checked your public record and there is no judgment on your record and see what he has to say about that. Could be the judgment was from a court in some other county than the one you live in and could be it is an out of state judgment which would have to be domesticated into your state but hasn't been yet. If it is from another state but hasn't been domesticated yet you can fight in court about letting them domesticate it if you know about the domestication hearing. There are a lot of unknowns here and you may have to do some digging to get to the bottom of it. The only ineffectual advice I see here is that you might want to call the police. That probably won't do any good since this is a civil matter and not a criminal matter. That wasn't bad advice, just likely to prove ineffectual.
