The Supreme Court of California has declined a request to hear arguments in a case that halted a bail bonds company from attempting to collect on $38 million in unpaid debt because individuals were not provided the proper disclosures in advance.
The Supreme Court did not provide a reason why it declined to hear arguments in the case of BBBB Bonding Corp. v. Kiara Caldwell.
Earlier this year, a California Appeals Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that barred the bail bonds company from attempting to collect on accounts where individuals had signed financing agreements, but had not been provided with the required disclosures for consumer credit contracts. The bail bonds company had claimed that the agreements signed by the individuals were not consumer credit contracts and that bail bonds were governed by their own set of statutes.
The Supreme Court’s decision to not overturn an injunction against the bail bonds company from collecting on its outstanding accounts means the Appeals Court ruling stands, and that bail bonds companies must follow consumer protection laws, which advocates say may start a trend across the country.
The bail bonds company in this case had issued more than 18,000 bail bonds contracts with an outstanding debt amount in excess of $38 million. The company is now enjoined from attempting to collect on any of those amounts while litigation in the case continues.
“We are ecstatic about the Supreme Court’s decision to deny review, which highlights the strength of our class action claims and signals to all bail bond companies that they will be held to account for violating consumer protection laws.,” said Rio Scharf, Equal Justice Works Fellow at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area in a published report
