The attorney representing a collection agency owner who has filed a lawsuit against a number of plaintiffs’ attorneys has said that his client will continue the suit, even after a judge granted a motion to dismiss the lawsuit yesterday.
The judge provided the plaintiff, Jeffrey Winters, 30 days to file a second amended complaint. Winters owns Collection Solutions, based in Hackensack, N.J.
“While we haven’t yet completely analyzed the Court’s Opinion; we’re quite confident that we’ll be able to file a fully effective Second Amended Complaint within the maximum 30 days,” said David Hoffman, the lawyer representing Winters, in an email to AccountsRecovery.net.
Winters filed his lawsuit in December 2016, accusing five attorneys of engaging in a “mafia” style racketeering scheme by soliciting clients and then filing class-action lawsuits, seeking to settle the claims before the suits ever saw a courtroom.
Judge John Michael Vazquez has given the plaintiff an uphill climb in continuing to move the case forward. The First Amended Complaint filed by the plaintiff was “riddled with factually unsupported accusations and wholly conclusory language.” Winters and his attorney will have to dig deeper to prove their allegations. Vazquez said in his ruling.
If Plaintiffs believe that Defendants are conducting some nefarious scheme, then Plaintiffs will have to conduct much more due diligence to plausibly plead their claims rather than relying on PACER print-outs, a legal seminar, and other anecdotal information — all of which is benign on the surface (if not common practice).
Should Winters decide to file an amended complaint, and that complaint fails to address the “numerous deficiencies,” Judge Vazquez has said that the defendants will be able to file for Rule 11 sanctions.
