In the interest of brevity I'm going to make this as short as I can...I live in NY and this is ref. to a credit card. I received a summons (via the sheriff) from a collection attny. The account number on the summons was wrong. I'm sure it was a typo, but I answered the summons with "this is not my account...) I received from the attny a reply to my answer denying "each and every claim" and stating the following affirmative defenses: Defendant fails to state a cause of action (I thought the wrong account number was my cause of action) and secondly stating "Any damages suffered by the defendant is a result of his own actions/inactions". (I didn't counterclaim anything) What happens next? Do I have to answer his answer. Do I answer the court? Will I receive a notice from the court that I have to appear? I don't want to make the mistake of doing nothing and have a judgement entered against me by default.
Who did you answer to? If you answered just to the attorney, rest assured, he did not forward it to the courts. If you answered to the courts, then they will set a hearing date for you. You can call the court clerk, and they will tell you if they have received anything from either side.
HMI, The first thing to do is reply to the summons. This has to go to the court, otherwise the court will give a judgement against you. You only have a certain number of days to respond so if you haven't responded to the court, call and ask or look at the summons. It should say how many days you have to respond after you are served. Once you have responded to the court, they will set up a pretrial hearing and send you a form to complete and send to the court. You should also CC a copy to the other attorney. Is this in small claims or civil court?
I have already replied to the court and cc the attorney. The attorney then sent me a reply to my reply. His reply was on the same form as the original summons " New York State Supreme Court-Sullivan County". I am now wondering if I'm suppose to answer again? or just wait to hear from the court.
Is this your account? How old is it? Can you give us a little more information? I am going through the same thing right now so I'll try to assist you as much as possible.
Here's the story...the credit card first went deliquent in 1995 and stayed that way through most of 1996. We tried off and on to make some small payments in an effort to keep the CA's from hounding us, but it was a losing battle. We had major financial problems and ended up cashing in our life insurance, withdrawing all our retirement money and maxing out the equity loan on our house. We were trying to keep our business afloat and starting using our credit cards to pay business expenses. Bottom line -we were in debt about $100,000 and had to give priority to our mortgage and equity payments (They were threatening to foreclose) Our mistake, it may turn out, was sending the credit card co. (Fleet) a $73 payment in April of 1997. I could kick myself now, because I suspect this may have re-started the SOL clock. Last month we received a summons from a coll. attny on behalf of Portfolio Recovery (this was the 2nd or 3rd CA to purchase this account) In reading over the summons for the umpteenth time I noticed that the account number was incorrect. In fact, the # on our credit report is not even close to our actual Fleet acct.#, but I understand that Fleet may have changed the number when they sold the account. In any case, the summons didn't even have the new number correct. This, I suspect, was only a typo, but I felt if they were going to drag us into court then they should be made to get the number right. I answered the summons using a template I found on the internet and filed it with the court clerk and sent it registered, etc. to the attorney. The attorney answered back - not on his letterhead, but on the same form he used to file the complaint. He denied all allegations (I doubt that he even checked the account #). I am now waiting to hear from the court. I've got a bad feeling this isn't going to turn out too well. A wrong account number doesn't mean that this isn't our account and that $73 payment will be coming back to haunt us. Just for the record, we paid off all but about $10,000 of the $100,000. The $10,000 was owed to 4 different credit card companies and we paid each of them $2500 against $5000 balances on each - leaving the $10,000. Two of them are definately SOL, one has already won a judgement against us for the amount owed and now this one is coming after us. We've just about gotten back on our feet, but we just don't have any money to pay these off. On a side note to anyone who bothered to read this post...credit cards may be a real convenience, but they are a nightmare if you run into financial trouble. Dealing with them is like dealing with a loan shark. The interest accruing on this card with Fleet is 24.50% and the balance owed has doubled from $2345 to over $4600.
If the $ 73.00 did not bring you current, I don't believe that the SOL would be re-started. The SOL starts 180 days (6 mos) after the 1st missed payment that led to the delinquincey.
