Discovery – Requests for Admissions

Like my article on requests for documents, this is going to be a brief article. For a fuller discussion and samples, look in the Debt Defense System. Still, you should be able to create your own after reading this.

As with other discovery, Requests for Admissions are controlled by the rules of civil procedure for your jurisdiction. And there are two sets of rules you must consider: your state rules in general and, if you are in some sub-court of the state, the rules regarding your court; and your “Local Rules” if your court has them.

Sub-Courts

An example of what I mean by “sub-court” might be what we have in Missouri, Associate Circuit courts – courts that are designed to handle smaller amounts of money, or small claims courts (even less money). Many states have similar types of arrangements, and these sub-courts will have their own special rules, and these rules always control when and how much discovery you can conduct.

Even if you’re not in that sort of sub-court, your court may have “local rules,” which are rules designed to elaborate on your state’s rules of civil procedure. The rules of civil procedure will create the general structure of discovery and set the penalties for not cooperating – the local rules will establish certain limits: only a certain number, for example, or that they must be in a certain format (not “compound,” usually, meaning without sub-parts).

Whatever the situation, you must find the rules controlling your discovery, or you may do something wrong, giving the debt collector an easy out. To find your rules of civil procedure, follow this link. Any special rules may be mentioned in your rules of civil procedure or in your court’s web-page. I am not aware of these rules – but you must be.

What Admissions Are

I have done my best to warn you throughout this series, in my Debt Trouble series, and elsewhere, about the risks of admissions. Whereas requests for admissions are covered in the rules of discovery, they really are not discovery: they are a sort of agreement that certain issues do not need to be argued about. You aren’t seeking information or evidence, you are asking the other side not to dispute the issue – to make evidence unnecessary. That means that while you can argue about what documents or interrogatory answers mean and whether they “establish” any fact, once an admission is made, the issue is resolved and decided. When it comes to answering their requests for admissions, that means you should be very, very cautious. One reason I encourage people to send out discovery first is that I want you to see how they handle yours before you try to answer theirs.

Content

If you have unlimited requests for admissions, you should make sure, at least, to ask them to admit to no knowledge or information regarding each part of their petition. For example, if their first allegation is that you owe them money, you ask them to admit that you do not. And then you ask them to admit they have no evidence that you do. (That’s two separate requests, because requests for admissions must never be “compound” – they can’t have more than one part.)

Special Warning Regarding Requests for Admissions

It should be obvious from the above that requests for admissions are basically just traps for suckers. They will deny or object to every single request you make on any basis, however flimsy. If your rules limit your total discovery to a certain number of requests and include requests for admissions in that number (so that for every request for admission, you lose an interrogatory), I suggest you skip the requests for admissions altogether. On the other hand, many jurisdictions do not limit them this way. The reason you use requests for admissions is that you want to have the materials you need for a motion for summary judgment even if they don’t respond to your discovery at all.

Four Sneaky Tricks of Debt Collectors

Debt collectors make their money by scaring or tricking, people into forfeiting their rights to defend themselves. Often they will let you think you have come to some sort of agreement with them to avoid court (and judgment), they won’t work with you to accommodate your schedule, and in general try to trick, intimidate and scare you into staying away from court. Then they get default judgments. Here are some of their more common tricks. Check out the Litigation Manual and materials for things you can do if debt collectors try these on you.

Don’t let them trick you out of your right to defend yourself. If you fight, you have an excellent chance to win – if you don’t show up and they get a default judgment you may find your wages or bank accounts garnished before you know it.

How to Argue Motions in Court

What to Say and How to Say it

When you’re sued for debt, you may need to make or defend motions in court, and this sometimes means making arguments before the court. This video will help you know what to say and how to argue motions in court.

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Blaming Banks for the Problems they Caused

Has it occurred to you that all or most of your problems were caused by the very bank that is now suing you or that the debt collector purchased the debt from and is now suing you for? Some people argue that you could use that as a defense against their claims against you.

It will not.

Blaming the banks is a kind of “unclean hands” argument, and as far as I’m concerned, it is absolutely justified in a moral sense. The courts won’t see it that way, though.

Proximate Cause

The problem with arguing that “the banks” caused your problems is “proximate cause.” Proximate cause means the “specific problem” must be linked to specific actions by a specific entity. Viewed in that light, how can you argue that, say, Capital One, by extending credit cards and maintaining their policies, has really “caused” anything to happen in society? Many people may believe that the banks, collectively, caused big problems that resulted in raising taxes and sucking resources away from regular people, but how can you assign a specific role in that to Capital One?

Likewise, how do you prove that Capital One caused you problems that you could not have, and should not have, overcome? If we were truly in a capitalistic society the argument simply could not be made: the fact that you did not overcome the problem would be proof that you should not have done so. But we live in an age of bailouts and government interference, of course.

Tell that to the judge, a life-time public employee wielding far-reaching government power every day of his or her professional life.

And then the final zinger: how do you prove what specific action by your specific bank caused some specific injury to you?

Cigarette Litigation

This whole complex of proximate cause issues prevented anyone from winning cigarette litigation for decades. What finally allowed people to get through and win some of the cases was very strong evidence of conspiracy to hide specific facts that the companies knew and had a duty to disclose. There may be evidence of banking conspiracy – there is in some cases – but unlike a cigarette plaintiff who died of lung cancer, you will be hard pressed to show how your injury came from the banks’ action unless there are more specific grounds for applying the doctrine of unclean hands.

Cutting Edge Arguments and a Warning

As I say, I have my sympathies for the position that banks should not be permitted to profit from disasters they themselves caused. And many arguments that end up winning started out as sounding a little far-fetched. So you could consider it. On the other hand, the courts sometimes punish what they consider to be “frivolous” arguments and disputes. Arguments talking about banks and banking, like arguments claiming that our monetary system is completely corrupt live on the edge of “frivolousness” from the point of view of the courts. It would be possible that they could make you pay for taking that position.

 

Keep Your Eye on the Ball in Debt Defense

If you are a pro se debt defendant, remember this: Keep your eye on the ball or you will lose.

It is a cliché in sports and the rest of life that one must keep one’s eye on the ball. Anybody who has played a sport involving a moving ball has had that simple idea drilled into his or her head a million times. And yet it may be the single hardest thing to do. There are so many temptations to look elsewhere.

It’s the same in litigation, and the difficulty justifies this tip. You must watch the action and remember that your case isn’t over until it comes back “dismissed with prejudice.” Until then, you must not let your attention wander too far from the lawsuit.

Of course I’m not saying you should think about the case 100% of the time. What I am saying, though, is that you must always know where you are in the litigation, how far from trial, whether you have what you need or a plan for how to get it, whether you have responded to all the things needing response, etc. Lawsuits are played out in life over a fairly significant amount of time – you just have to stay on top of it during that time.

Any lapse in attention could make you lose valuable rights or the case in general.

This may seem like simply a pep-talk, but actually it isn’t. You are living a whole life with a lot of things going on. I’m reminding you that while lawsuits can seem to proceed slowly and could seem to allow you to forget about them for stretches of time until the other side does something, this is really not the case. Organization, focus and intensity on your goal here are necessary if you want to have a chance.

Our materials at Your Legal Leg Up can give you a lot of help, and our mission is to help you beat the debt collectors. We give you checklists and samples, but we cannot really make you keep your eyes on the ball. That can only come with your decision to be in your case to win. You have an excellent chance if you stay on top of things.

 

You are Either Winning or Losing

Today’s tip is about “keeping on track.” That is, sometimes people facing debt litigation are challenged by the mere numbers, and the debt – and everything about the case – can seem unreal and meaningless. Today’s tip is to remind you that it is real, and it does matter.

First, the deadlines are real, and they do matter. If you neglect to respond to discovery, for example, and the the time for responding to requests for admissions passes, you will likely face a motion for summary judgment. If you cannot get your responses permitted, you will probably lose the case. If the debt collector adds fees and manages to make them stick by means of a judgment, then you will likely spend a lot of time and effort trying to pay them – and get caught on the wheel of endless poverty. Unless you find a way off. Better to avoid that wheel!

It All Matters in Real Life

My point here is simple, though. It seems, when you have ten, twenty or fifty thousand dollars of debt, that a few bucks more won’t count. It seems that if you have two lawsuits pending against you already, it won’t matter if you take actions to avoid a third – or settle down and begin fighting them one at a time.

At a lower level, it looks like if you’re missing a payment, it doesn’t matter whether the late fee is correct or not.

In reality, it all counts.

I’m not saying that you will pay, dollar for dollar, on any money that is owed, but you will pay, one way or another, for everything that happens. The world is full of strange twists and turns, and all kinds of things happen – you inherit money, or one of the creditors drops the ball and disappears. One of them might make a settlement offer, or you need to refinance your house… if you don’t take care of what you can, your ability to act becomes more and more constricted.

There are no free lunches in this world, but if you keep trying things tend to work out eventually one way or the other – and the better you start, the more likely you are to have things work out in the end.

It All Matters in Litigation

In the world of litigation, on the other hand, it also all matters. In a way, the only thing that counts is the final score: you win or they win. But that’s not really the way it plays out. And the reason for that is actually similar to the reason the debt all counts. People – all people, but specially lawyers – are constantly evaluating what they should do. Should they drop the case and move on to someone a little easier to beat? A little more likely to pay? Could they actually lose the case? And how many other judgments could they get instead of pursuing you?

Cases almost never go to trial. Instead, the lawyers are constantly assessing the risk-reward ratio of continuing in the direction they’re going. If you are conducting yourself well and pushing them hard, it is more likely they will let you go and go off in search of easier victims. If you are doing the things you should do, and not doing the things you should not – you will make yourself a harder target.

You won’t necessarily know they’re going to give up until they actually do, so you have to play every play like it matters.

Denying Requests for Admission

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Preparing for Deposition Part 1

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Preparing for Deposition Part 2

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Discovery – Interrogatories

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