The National Center for Access to Justice has released a report and created a benchmark index that ranks each of the 50 states “on their adoption of best policies promoting fairness in consumer debt litigation” and reached the conclusion that “no state should consider that its work reforming consumer debt litigation is done.”
Washington, D.C., New York, Delaware, Alaska, Pennsylvania, Texas, Maryland, Washington, and Alabama were the states at the top of the list, while Hawaii, Louisiana, Montana, Rhode Island, and Nevada were at the bottom.
The report uses 24 different benchmarks, such as does the state impose a pleading requirement and does it prohibit the revival of time-barred claims, to determine its ranking. Each of the different benchmarks is assigned a different weight, based on the degree to which it helps reduce filings and default judgments in fraudulent, unsubstantiated, or otherwise faulty claims.
Out of a possible score of 100, Washington, D.C. scored a 53 to be ranked number one, while Hawaii, Louisiana, and Montana each scored a seven.
While calling the overall landscape of consumer debt litigation “bleak,” the report did note that 22 of the 24 benchmarks have been established as law in at least one state, meaning that the states just need to continue working on improving their policies and not reinventing the wheel, the NCAJ wrote.
Other items of note in the report:
- Only 10 states prevent revival of a time-barred consumer debt claim if the person makes a subsequent payment towards the debt
- All states still do not require creditors to plead facts showing timeliness of their consumer debt complaints
- Three states still require a defendant to have an answer notarized, which creates a barrier to responding to consumer debt lawsuit
- Fifteen states still charge a fee to answer a consumer debt complaint
