To Sue You or Not to Sue You – What Matters to Debt Collectors

If you are behind in paying some bills and are considering negotiating with someone bugging you for money, what are the factors you need to consider as you prepare for and then talk with them? We have discussed elsewhere the need not to “give away” information carelessly. In this article we discuss the negotiations more from the point of view of the collector. You’ll need to know this as you decide what to do.

As simple as it seems, the first question is whether you are dealing with an original creditor or debt buyer, or debt collector. Their perspective makes a lot of difference. With that in mind, we’ll look at negotiations with the three categories of counter-parties you will encounter: original creditors, debt buyers, and actual debt collectors (firms retained to try to collect money for the original creditor).

Original Creditor

Original creditors are, usually, the businesses that actually made a deal with you in the first place, typically via a consumer transaction. Dealing with original creditors, because they are lots of different businesses in the business of doing whatever they do, is much less predictable than dealing with debt collectors or buyers, who generally have standardized procedures for talking to you.

Original creditors are in business to do business, and not to collect money. Depending on the size of the company and the person to whom you are talking, trying to collect money may be the worst part of the person’s day. He doesn’t want the bother, and spending time collecting money could be taking away from much more important tasks. Also, every business owner is aware that the business’s reputation could be hurt either by being too aggressive or by provoking harmful responses.

Even in larger companies (excluding auto sales, which are designed with collections in mind), the person talking to you will have other considerations than just squeezing the last dollar out of you. Most original creditors – even banks and credit cards – don’t want to sue you, so the chances are good that you won’t get sued without plenty of warning. Companies that are not set up to litigate normally fear and avoid it – with very good reason – and an original creditor must also be concerned about reputation with other customers and clients in general.

 

As a general rule, original creditors would rather not do things to damage your credit (although the bigger the business the less they care about this in my experience), and most small ones might not even be set up in a practical way to do so. On the other hand, because original creditors are not in the business of suing and do not think of the bills strictly as numbers, it can be difficult to get them to stop thinking that you must pay all the money you owe, although people will have different perspectives on this for lots of reasons.

Depending on how their business is doing, original creditors could be much more or less aggressive in chasing you. For a smaller company, chasing you is difficult and impractical, and at some point the owner will settle for far, far less than you owe just to put the experience behind him or her. If they do sue you, chances are pretty good they’ll have what they need to prove you owe the money, but not necessarily the resources to keep after you to try to collect the judgment.

Debt Buyers

Debt buyers are pretty much the opposite of original creditors. They really have no other business than collecting money other people earned. Whereas the original creditor may have budgeted primarily for production and sale of goods, and been surprised by having to try to collect, debt buyers budget exclusively for collection and have no other significant costs. Nor do they have the same concerns about public opinion – they aren’t vulnerable to market forces. On the other hand, they are further from the original transaction and often have trouble obtaining the records they need to beat you in court if push comes to shove.

Bottom Line

What all that means is that whereas original creditors are somewhat reluctant to negotiate with you but sometimes have to for practical reasons, debt buyers are all about negotiating with you, and have a harder time winning, but are more willing to sue you anyway. They are designed to extract money from you, in other words.

A debt buyer can do you some harm on your credit report by reporting your debt, but in reality the main harm will have already occurred if your original creditor reported the debt. Debt buyers cannot clean your record of credit damage caused by the original creditor, so you can only negotiate to get them to stop reporting you.

Debt buyers purchase debts for widely different amounts, depending primarily on how old the debt is. Exactly how the figure is determined is a closely guarded secret, but the purchase is usually made by auction of large numbers of debts packaged together. Not all debt buyers are willing to sue you under any conditions, incidentally. They will telephone you endlessly and then, eventually, sell the debt to another company. And some debt buyers routinely sue without even any kind of warning. The biggest of the debt buyers seem to call for a while and then sue.

If you are negotiating with a debt buyer, there are a number of things you need to bear in mind. For a full discussion of that, you will want to get the Debt Negotiation Dashboard. Bear in mind that while debt buyers are less equipped to sue you, they are more ready and willing to do so, than most original creditors. But since they are in the business of extracting dollars from people without a lot of money, they can take a more realistic view of how much you can pay if you want to. And remember, you can negotiate to get them to stop hurting your credit report, but you can’t get them to wipe clean the debt from whatever the original creditor did.

Actual Debt Collectors

Actual debt collectors can negotiate with you, but they draw their real authority to do so from the original creditor and will have to take any request for a deep reduction in amount or change of terms back to the original creditors (although they will have some discretion over smaller changes). Debt collectors are more “numbers” oriented, however, so it might be possible to get them to accept an offer that the original creditor previously turned down.

Usually, when the bill is sent to the debt collector, the original creditor will stop negotiating with you – so if you call up and want to talk about the debt, for example, they will refer you to the debt collector. In that situation, the debt collector will keep a significant amount of anything you pay – 25% or more is not unusual. What will frequently happen, however, is that the debts will eventually be returned to the original creditor. If you can time that correctly, you might have an opportunity for a steep discount, because the next step is to sell the debt for a small fraction of its nominal value or to let it go entirely. The advantage of catching the debt before it gets sold, of course, is that you can make cleaning your credit a part of the deal.

Motions to Transfer in Massachusetts

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Two Kinds of Verification – FDCPA and FCRA- and How to Use them

We have spent much of our time talking about “verification” on our site and videos, and what we have meant in most of that has been the “verification” process provided by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). But there is another kind of validation you can use – validation as permitted by the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

We talk about that below and discuss how you can use both forms of validation, together or separately, to your advantage in defending yourself from the debt collectors and in repairing your credit.

The two kinds of verification are different rights. They apply in different circumstances, to possibly different “persons” under different circumstances, give different rights, and have different time requirements.

You can use them both, but they are completely separate. It is important to keep them straight.

Make sure you keep track of everything you do under either statute, and make sure that the response you get is appropriate for the statute you used for the specific right you invoke.

Rights under the FDCPA

Under the FDCPA, when a debt collector first contacts you on a debt, it is required by law to notify you of your right to dispute the debt and require “validation” or “verification.” The two words are used interchangeably, and the requirement is quite simple in general:

  • First, the debt collector must notify you of the right to dispute within 30 days (along with giving you the “mini-Miranda” warning – that anything you say may be used for collection of a debt) within five days of first contacting you.
  • And then, the debt collector must “verify” the debt if you ask within the thirty days provided.

Just to make clear, it is YOU who have 30 days to dispute after getting the notice of your rights. The debt collector does not literally even have to do anything at all and also has no time limit. It’s just that, if you dispute and request verification, it cannot make further attempts to collect on the debt until it has verified it.

Exactly what verifying it is, is not exactly clear.

It would appear that contacting the original creditor and “establishing” that the debt is yours would be enough. That’s because the purpose of the requirement is not to require a separate lawsuit, but just to protect consumers from harassment based on typos or mistaken identities. The debt collector has to take some action to connect you to the debt if you dispute it under the FDCPA.

Even this low burden often seems to be too much, and possibly that is because the second owner of the debt (if there is one) has no relationship to the original creditor and simply cannot get the debt verified.  Whatever the reason, asking for verification is often enough to make them go away. If they try to collect without having verified, that violates the FDCPA. And that in turn might allow you to stop a lawsuit brought against you.

Remember, however, that when the debt collector immediately files suit against you, this is not a “first contact” which triggers your right to notice and dispute. If you get served, you have to answer (or move to dismiss). It is not enough to request verification.

Disputing under the Fair Credit Reporting Act

There is another kind of validation, and it is completely different from the FDCPA, although you can use it to fight debt collectors, too. It is the validation provided for by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

This is your right to “dispute” an item on your credit report.

You do this after looking at your credit report and seeing something that is not positive. Let’s say you see a debt collector reporting that you owe a debt. Remember your right to verification under the FDCPA comes when the debt collector first contacts you to try to collect the debt. You can dispute a line item on your credit report at any time.

There are rules, and there are better and worse ways to do it. But it does not depend on the other side being a debt collector or having tried to collect the debt. It simply requires that they have put some bad information on your credit report.

When you seek verification under the FDCPA, the debt collector has to verify the debt before making further attempts to collect. When you “dispute” the debt under the FCRA, it doesn’t affect collection. Instead, you are forcing the company to “investigate” the debt and show that what it is saying to the credit reporting agencies is true.

If the company reporting you cannot validate the debt, it is just required to withdraw the offending credit reference. But it could still try to collect the debt.

If it does keep trying to collect the debt after withdrawing a bad credit reference, that might be a type of admission that it can’t prove the debt if the case goes to a lawsuit.

But it probably isn’t controlling on the case because “validation” of a credit report is not

the same thing as proving that the debt is valid.

A Helpful Strategy

Here’s a strategy that might be helpful. If you receive a bill from a junk debt buyer – a company that bought your debt from the original creditor, in other words – you should

send a request for verification under the FDCPA right away. Then you should and get your credit report and look at it.

If the debt collector is reporting your debt on your credit report, you will want to dispute the credit report and seek validation under the FCRA. Separately.

Remember these are completely different rights. Your sending two different disputes may confuse the debt collector, but remember that under the FDCPA it must provide proof as to your identity and its right to bug you, while under the FCRA it must explain why the information it put on your credit report was correct. The debt collector may not verify under the FCRA, in which case you can clear your credit report.

If it DOES try to validate, it will probably give you information that it would object to having to provide if it were suing you for the debt – so it’s a shortcut to some discovery in that situation.

You should not try to do the FCRA verification first because it takes too much time.

To do the credit dispute right you have to get your credit report and dispute it with the credit bureau before you dispute it with the debt collector under the FCRA if you want to protect all your rights. You don’t have time to work your way through the FCRA before asserting your FDCPA rights.

On the other hand, if the company does not verify under the FDCPA, that would be worth mentioning as a basis for your credit dispute.

We should add that when you get the first letter from the debt collector you may not even know whether it is reporting you on your credit report. They often do not, so you won’t know whether or not you will have anything under the FCRA. But if they are contacting you, you have the right under the FDCPA. Since it only lasts for 30 days, you need not to delay in disputing.

We always recommend sending your disputes by certified mail (and keep all the proof). You don’t have to do this legally, but these things often come down to a question of what you can prove, and having proof from the postal service is a very good investment.

Seven Steps to Take when Sued for Debt

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Two Supreme Court Cases Attacking Fair Debt Collection Practices Act

The Supreme Court has recently damaged debt defendants’ rights with two very important decisions, one allowing debt collectors to bombard the bankruptcy courts with outdated claims, and the other holding that junk debt buyers are not debt collectors under one important definition of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) These rulings may have changed the landscape of defense, but one thing is clear: you need to know your rights more now than ever. Pro se defense may be the only kind of debt defense you can get anymore.

Pro Se Defense

Let’s start with what “pro se defense” is. Pro se means representing yourself in a lawsuit. This will save a tremendous amount in legal fees, but it ALSO means taking on the burdens and risks of doing the defense yourself. These burdens and risks are not small, and I’ve always called hiring the right lawyer the “gold standard” of defense. But in most debt cases people can handle their own defense because the law is not complicated and the cases are document, rather than witness, intensive. Pro se defense even has some significant advantages in the debt law context.

The recent Supreme Court rulings are going to force more people to take a more active role in their defense.

Who is a Debt Collector

In Henson et al. v. Santander Consumer USA, Inc., No. 16349 (Slip Op. 6-12-17), the Supreme Court ruled that junk debt buyers are not“debt collectors” under one provision of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). I discuss that case, its impact, and what action people need to take regarding it, in my article and video, “Who Is a Debt Collector – Supreme Court Tries to Destroy the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and what to Do about that.” In general, the effect of Santander is to make it more difficult to establish that a junk debt buyer is a debt collector, and it may signify that the Supreme Court would not let you sue junk debt buyers under the FDCPA at all.

Santander is going to make it more difficult for you to get a lawyer to defend you in a debt case – and more expensive if you can get one. That’s because the FDCPA applies only to debt collectors and gives you certain counterclaims, and certain defenses, that make defending you easier. The FDCPA also includes a “fee-shifting” provision which allows a consumer to make a debt collector pay for most of the time a lawyer spends on a case. These things – ease of defense and a rich company to pay fees – make FDCPA cases attractive to lawyers. Take away the FDCPA, and the lawyers are going to have to charge more – a LOT more. And they simply won’t take as many cases because they’re harder. This means that debt law defendants, already drastically underrepresented, are going to find it much more difficult to hire lawyers.

The decision in Santander threatens to neutralize the FDCPA and let junk debt buyers – who now make up the vast majority of debt collectors – run completely wild. They will be much freer to abuse, deceive, harass – in short, all the tricks that brought about the FDCPA in the first place because the laws regulating them will have been predominantly removed. At the same time it makes getting a lawyer much more difficult, the decision in Santander will likely result in a large number of new and wrong lawsuits. HOWEVER, Santander does not negate any (or very few, anyway) of your defenses in a debt law case, and it does not reduce the burden of proof for debt collectors. You can still win, in other words, but you very well may have to do it yourself.

Bankrupts Beware

Bankruptcy is one refuge debtors have from debt collectors. In general, you can file bankruptcy and force all your creditors to stop contacting you and, instead, file their claims in your bankruptcy action. In theory, the court will then either grant those claims or deny them according to what is right. The dirty little secret of bankruptcy, though, is that if claims are not disputed, they are generally granted. In bankruptcy cases brought by poor people (you can bet Donald Trump never had this problem), the lawyers representing the bankrupts have little incentive to dispute wrongful claims. There’s a U.S. trustee who is supposed to oversee the process and protect the bankrupt and legitimate creditors from bad claims, but guess what?

They usually don’t.

So bad claims get allowed. In most bankruptcies, allowing a bad claim means that it’s going to get paid (eventually) by the person filing for bankruptcy.

Junk Debt Buyers Make Things Worse

Enter the junk debt buyers. They buy vast amounts of LONG overdue debt – debt far beyond the statute of limitations – and file claims in bankruptcy cases. This bogs the bankruptcy courts and everyone involved down, and as a practical matter results in people paying billions of dollars to debt collectors who have no real right to collect. This crushes the people who declared bankruptcy and rips off the legitimate creditors whose debts get paid at a lower rate.

Some debtors were suing debt collectors under the FDCPA for filing claims in bankruptcy that were beyond the statute of limitations. Because of the FDCPA’s fee-shifting provision, the debtors’ bankruptcy lawyers had at least some financial incentive to bring these claims and dispute unenforceable claims. They were doing so as part of the bankruptcy proceedings, and the debtors were also bringing suit outside of the bankruptcy context as well.

The Supreme Court negated the FDCPA’s protection with its holding in Midland Funding, LLC v. Johnson, No. 16-348 (Slip Op. 5-15-17). In that case, the Court ruled that debt collectors could file claims in bankruptcy that they know are unenforceable in an ordinary court (and would violate the FDCPA if filed there).  For a fuller discussion of that case, look at my article and video, “Bankrupts Beware, FDCPA No Longer Applies – Opening the Floodgates to Bad Claims.”

What the Midland Funding case means, in practical effect, is that even if you’re in bankruptcy you’re going to have to know and protect your own rights. Your lawyer has VERY LITTLE incentive to challenge bad claims, and likewise the U.S. Trustee has VERY LITTLE time (or incentive) to do it. If the claims are allowed, you will be stuck paying them in all likelihood. That means that even if you file for bankruptcy you must be prepared to defend yourself against the debt collectors. You will AT LEAST need to know your rights, and you will very probably have to defend them pro se despite having a bankruptcy lawyer.

Conclusion

 

The net result of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Henson and Santander is that debt defendants will get much less help from lawyers. These cases are still possible to defend against and win – they’re as easy as any law gets, probably. Because so many fewer cases will in fact be litigated, your chances of winning have actually probably gone UP: it is even less profitable for debt collectors to fight now than it used to be because they will have so many more easy wins. But you are more likely to have to do it yourself now than ever.

Make it hard for them.

Supreme Court Attacks FDCPA – Erodes Definition of Debt Collector

The Supreme Court has recently issued rulings very harmful to people with debt collectors harassing or suing them. Its ruling in Henson et al. v. Santander Consumer USA, Inc., No. 16349 (Slip Op. 6-12-17) (“Santander”), seems to try to negate application of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) to the vast majority of debt collectors. I expect this decision will make it far more difficult for debt defendants to obtain legal representation and will cause debt collectors to engage in more deceptive, dishonest and abusive behavior.

Fair Debt Collection Practices Act

When Congress passed the FDCPA, the corruption and destructiveness of debt collectors were so rampant that debt collection was considered a threat to the American way of life. The FDCPA was accordingly designed to prevent fraud, deception and unfairness in general in the collection of debts, with Congress going to so far as to name numerous specific actions as “per se” violations of the Act but also to include the more general description of “unfair” debt collection practices. The reason for identifying numerous specific practices, as well as including the more general rule, was to prevent debt collectors from changing the forms their actions took without changing what they were basically doing.

The Supreme Court has just reduced that Congressional intent to a farce, applying just half of the statutory definition of “debt collector” to a case and finding that, under that half of the definition, junk debt buyers were not debt collectors.

Real-Life Debt Collection

What happens in most debt collection is that creditors sell charged-off debt to debt buyers who exist entirely to collect that money by hook or by crook. Instead of hiring debt collectors to collect on debts and then paying them out of the proceeds, the creditors now get their money first and let the debt collectors take their money from the debtors. All that has happened is that nominal ownership of the debt has changed. In other words, debt collectors have assumed a different form to pursue the very same activities.

Henson et al. v. Santander Consumer USA, Inc.

The Supreme Court has said that it would not allow parties to elevate form over substance and evade the impact of laws only about twenty million times during the course of its existence. Santander cheerfully elevates form over substance to allow the same actors to perform the same abhorrent deeds that the FDCPA was designed to prevent.

One could also characterize the Court’s ruling as dishonest in that it only analyzed half of the definition of “debt collectors.” In looking at Section 1692a(6), the court examined the defining language as “any person… who regularly collects or attempts to collect, directly or indirectly, debts owed or due or asserted to be owed or due another.” The court’s decision then repeatedly referred to and emphasized the words “due another,” arguing that companies were only debt collectors if they fit that traditional form of collectors.

How the FDCPA Defines “Debt Collector”

Perhaps we should look at the part of the definition preceding the language in question to get a truer view of the statute’s clear intention:

The term “debt collector” means any person who uses any instrumentality of interstate commerce or the mails in any business the principal purpose of which is the collection of any debts, or who regularly collects or attempts to collect, directly or indirectly, debts owed or due or asserted to be owed or due another.

Section 1692a(6) (underlined portion is the part ignored by the Supreme Court in Santander, italicized word “any” is for emphasis)

Doesn’t it seem reasonable to read “any debts” literally, so that if the principal purpose of a business is to collect debts, they’re a debt collector? Of course it does, and that would obviously include businesses that exist to purchase debts and collect on them. The Court opinion glibly slides over that, saying that “the parties haven’t much litigated that alternative definition of debt collector and in granting certiorari we didn’t agree to consider it, either.” Santander, Slip Op. at 5. In other words, the Supreme Court agreed to hear only so much of the case as allowed them to shove a dagger into the apparent heart of the FDCPA – not enough of the case to show what the FDCPA actually intended or to do justice.

In theory, the decision in Santander leaves open the possibility that this “alternative” definition would extend the meaning of “debt collector” to junk debt buyers. On the other hand, the decision looks to me like a court in search of a justification for a desired outcome, and it has to be viewed as a negative indication for the Court’s integrity. Particularly in the context of its decision in Midland Funding, LLC v. Johnson, No. 16-348 (Slip Op. 5-15-17) (see my article, “Opening the Floodgates of Bad Claims”), it shows actual hostility to the laws that protect consumers from debt collectors and a willingness to engage in intellectually dishonest games to destroy them. As a practical matter, it will likely be several years before the Supreme Court revisits the definition of “debt collector” and applies the entire definition to the question of junk debt buyers.

Pleading that a Junk Debt Buyer is a “Debt Collector”

The Supreme Court passed over the part of the definition of debt collector that defined businesses in terms of their “principal purpose” in favor of the “regularly collected” language. Why? Probably because debt defendants have normally found it very easy to prove that a company “regularly collected” debts – in fact, under prevailing Eighth Circuit law, for example, if a law firm represents collectors in as few as three to five cases per year it is considered to be “regularly collecting” debts. Under fact pleading rules, one must plead facts constituting a basis for your legal conclusion. So debt defendants routinely allege something like the following:

Heartless, Ruthless and Merciless, Attorneys at Law, represent debt collectors in dozens of lawsuits attempting to collect debts per year and are, accordingly, debt collectors, and

Heartless Debt Collector, Inc., regularly sues persons for debts purchased after default…

In other words, debt defendants have typically used the “regularly collected” language because it is easy to demonstrate as a matter of public record. Establishing a business’s “principal purpose” will be much more difficult. My attempts to find an authoritative definition for “principal purpose” of a business turned up zero cases. While I’m confident that there must be some cases that address the issue, it is certainly not many. The term “principal purpose” is frequently used in judicial decisions, but its use is primarily generic, as a synonym for “main” or “major.” I found no cases quantifying the term in any way.

The junk debt buyers, who purchase billions of dollars of debt for no other purpose than to collect it in any way they can, will argue that their “principal purpose” is to “service” that debt. In their lexicon that really means extort payment in as many ways, over as long a period, as possible. But they will claim all manner of beneficial purposes for their activities, and this will alter the nature of the proof required to establish that the company is a debt collector. Rather than being a matter of public record, information regarding a business’s “principal purpose” will be in the possession of the debt collector – and that means that parties attempting to obtain that information will encounter the same series of stone walls, delays and unethical and oppressive litigation strategies they encounter in all their other discovery attempts.

Considering the current ideology and integrity of the Supreme Court, of which debt collectors are very well aware, who knows what the courts will officially “believe?” As a debt defendant, you must now allege and attempt to prove that the debt collector’s main business is to collect debts, but the judicial wind will be in your face.

What Debt Defendants Should Do

Debt defendants have all the same defenses to debt lawsuits they ever did – or almost all of them. Santander applies very little to the defense of debt suits.

On the other hand, many and perhaps most lawyers are going to be scared away from taking debt cases. Many lawyers who have not closely examined Santander will simply regard the FDCPA as not applying to junk debt buyers – and that is almost all the debt collectors in litigation these days. These lawyers will decline to take debt defense cases or will charge much more, and accomplish much less, than they would have, because they will not think they can counterclaim on your behalf. Lawyers who have closely examined Santander and see the same things I do will have to charge more for their services and warn clients that chances of prevailing are not as good as they used to be.

This means that far more debt defendants will be on their own. The only way many of them will be able to have a defense at all will be if they defend themselves.

If you are currently involved in a debt lawsuit – with or without a lawyer, or as a lawyer on behalf of clients – and have a counterclaim, you should expect to see a motion to dismiss based on Santander. I believe you will want to amend your counterclaim to include the “principal purpose” language mentioned above. You will also need to conduct discovery designed to prove the company’s principal purpose.

Bankrupts Beware – FDCPA No Longer Applies to Claims

Bankruptcy has been one refuge debtors have from debt collectors, but the Supreme Court has recently made things much worse. In Midland Funding, LLC v. Johnson, No. 16-348 (Slip Op. 5-15-17), the Court held that filing claims in bankruptcy court on debts that are beyond the statute of limitations does not violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). If you are in bankruptcy or considering it, this is huge.

Opening the Floodgates to Bad Claims

What Bankruptcy Does

In general, if your debts get too bad, you can file bankruptcy and force all your creditors to stop contacting you. They have to file claims in your bankruptcy action, and the court will either grant those claims or deny them. The court then determines the amount of payments you must make, over what period of time, and you do your best to do that.

It isn’t an easy path, and in fact most bankruptcies are dissolved without “discharge.” That is, most bankruptcies end without accomplishing their purpose. Obviously, the less money you have to pay, and the shorter the period you have to make payments, the better your chances of getting what you wanted out of bankruptcy in the first place: a “fresh start.”

The dirty little secret of bankruptcy, though, is that if claims are not disputed, they are generally granted. In bankruptcy cases brought by poor people (you can bet Donald Trump never had this problem), the lawyers representing the bankrupts have little (personal) incentive to dispute wrongful claims because they’re being paid out of the scanty resources of their clients. There’s a U.S. trustee who is supposed to oversee the process and protect the bankrupt and legitimate creditors from bad claims, but guess what?

They often don’t. Likewise, the court should attempt to winnow out bad claims, but given the number of bankruptcies and their complexity, this often does not happen.

In most bankruptcies, allowing a bad claim means that it’s going to get paid (eventually) by the person filing for bankruptcy. Under current realities, that means a lot of bad claims get paid by poor people.

Enter the junk debt buyers to make things much worse. They buy vast amounts of LONG overdue debt – debt far beyond the statute of limitations – and file claims in bankruptcy cases. This bogs the bankruptcy courts, the trustees, and bankruptcy lawyers down. The more bad claims they file, the more get through because of carelessness. They should NEVER get through, because an unenforceable claim should ALWAYS be denied under bankruptcy rules.

Bad claims hurt the chances of the bankrupts to get their fresh start, hurt the chances of the legitimate creditors to get paid, and incidentally makes the whole process stink to high heaven of injustice. Concern about this obvious corruption of the entire process, incidentally, is not just liberal “blather.” The courts jealously guard their claims to legitimacy – legitimacy is essential to their ability to work at all. Allowing a bunch of hoodlums in fancy suits to steal wholesale from the poor damages the legal system at its very core.

The FDCPA used to offer some protection against that, but the Supreme Court negated that protection with its holding in Midland Funding, LLC v. Johnson, No. 16-348 (Slip Op. 5-15-17). In that case, the Court ruled that debt collectors could file claims in bankruptcy that would be illegal if filed in other courts.

Midland Funding, LLC v. Johnson

The relevant facts in Midland Funding are very simple. Midland, a junk debt buyer, was buying extremely old debts for very small amounts of money. They were using these debts, which were far beyond the statutes of limitations, as the basis for many claims in bankruptcy. Johnson opposed and had the claim in that case disallowed, and then filed suit in district court under the FDCPA, alleging that the claim had been unfair or unconscionable. The essence of Johnson’s claim was that filing obviously time-barred claims in a bankruptcy proceeding was an unfair debt collection practice.

The Supreme Court ruled that it was not.

There is no need to review (here) the tortured logic that effectively immunizes from consequences the intentional doing of something that never, under any circumstances, should be allowed. The state of the law simply is this: debt collectors can file obviously unenforceable claims in bankruptcy without worrying about the FDCPA.

There is perhaps one glimmer of light in this very bad decision. The Supreme Court was addressing “obviously outdated” claims. What Midland was doing was buying obviously unenforceable claims and hoping they would be overlooked and erroneously allowed. While this obviousness is one main way a debt collector’s intention to file outdated claims would be known, the obviousness was also a reason the Court found that the claims were not “deceptive.” What if the claims were known to be outdated by the debt collector but were not obviously so? Facts like that, or similar facts tending to show some actual intent to deceive would present difficult evidentiary issues, but the case could arise and might tip the balance in the other direction.

Conclusion

What the Midland Funding case means, in practical effect, however, is that even if you’re in bankruptcy you’re going to have to know and protect your own rights. Your lawyer has VERY LITTLE incentive to challenge bad claims, and the U.S. Trustee has VERY LITTLE time (or incentive) to do it. If the claims are allowed, you will be stuck paying them in all likelihood. That means that even if you file for bankruptcy you must be prepared to defend yourself against the debt collectors. You will AT LEAST need to know your rights, and you will very probably have to defend them pro se. You’re probably not going to get much help from your lawyer on this one.

Original Creditor or Someone Else – Who is Suing You?

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Give No Free Information – Beware the Hardship Application

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Never make a Partial Payment

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