Marie: You have certainly brought up some excellent points. And I'm going to take this opportunity to illustrate the way that I work with collection agencies and the like. You and most others look at the law to see if you and the "enemy" are in compliance with the law and if not, use the law as a hammer against them. That's fine, of course, but I go at it in a little different way. Let me use an example of what I am talking about. ************************* A few years ago, a biker friend of mine and his buddies wanted to fight the helmet laws here in Oklahoma. So they checked out what the law said and figured out the fact that while the law said that one had to wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle, it didn't say where the cyclist had to wear the required and much hated helmet. So one of them put on two helmets, one on each knee but rode bareheaded. He was quickly stopped and given a ticket. He went to court and proved his point, and won the case with no problem at all. In other words, he used his head for something other than a helmet rack. The law was struck down and the bikers then gathered their political strength and went to the legislature and got the law changed so that only minors had to wear helmets. *************************** Another similiar situation was the case of a local lawyer who wanted to prove a point. He had noticed that the law required all motor vehicles to display a proper license tag unless the vehicle had a 12 foot or longer chain attached to the rear bumper which made contact with the street. So he removed the tag on his caddy and replaced it with a 12 foot chain the length of which dragged on the street. And he went cruising. Naturally, it didn't take some cop long to flag him down and give him a ticket. And he too went to court armed with the law. Needless to say, he won and the 12 foot chain rule was quickly removed from the books. ************************** I do much the same. I look at the law and if it says that the collection agency or the creditor must do something or other, then I think about what the law says for a while and try to come up with some way to make them break the law either by omission or by failure to abide. I try to make them think of something else rather than what they are supposed to be thinking about. Or in the case of the CRA who must do a much deeper investigation if they are alerted that a dispute or some problem exists. The obvious answer is to deliberately create the dispute and then inform the CRA that the dispute exists. I also try to hoodwink the creditor or the CA into believing that if they communicate with any third party while the dispute is in progress they will be in violation of the FDCPA. If they fall for it, which they usually do since they usually don't know any better, when the credit bureau tries to do a further investigation as required of them, the CA or creditor does not answer them and since the CRA don't get an answer, they have no choice but to delete. Sure it's tricky, and the wording of the letters has to be exactly right or it can backfire on you. But it works most of the time. That's all I care about. I don't have to be an attorney and I don't even have to know the law. I only have to be able to read and understand one small portion of the law and "force" it to work for me under certain limited conditions that I carefully create. Kinda like setting up some of those silly soap operas and the situations the actors always seem to be getting into. They are very carefully created to look and "feel" real. But in reality, any sensible person ought to know they are fake created scenes and situations. But the audience usually gets so involved in the plot that they couldn't care less. All I can say is that it works for me and if one uses his imagination, there is no end to all the traps one can set up for the unsuspecting clerks to fall into. After all, they aren't paid to think, just follow directions, so they do. It just has to be believeable.
I know why those you looking for the cases I cited could not find them , because apparently Findlaw only goes back to 1996 and the cases I am referring to are dated back to 1994 and 1986 and 1987 and they are not supreme court cases. I have to admit I use lexis-nexis which is a paid subscription for legal professionals and I have access to it. On Lexis the decisions go way back and unfortunately most of the free services on the web have cases dated back to 1995. However, if you go down to your local law library, the opinion is in of the case reporter books. I apologize for the inconvenience. But lexisone.com is very good and if you don't want to go to the library and you don't mind pay a few dollars to read the case online, go for it because it does exist and it is still good case law. Cyprigirl
Personally. I prefer to go down to the state capitol and use the law library there. It's not all that far from my home, and I seem to get a clearer mental picture of what is being said in a book than I do from a computer screen. I think it's those two unruly pupils of mine up to their mischief again. LOL
