EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is part of a series that is sponsored by WebRecon. WebRecon identifies serial plaintiffs lurking in your database BEFORE you contact them and expose yourself to a likely lawsuit. Protect your company from as many as one in three new consumer lawsuits by scrubbing your consumers through WebRecon first. Want to learn more? Call (855) WEB-RECON or email admin@webrecon.net today! Thanks to WebRecon for sponsoring this series.
DISCLAIMER: This article is based on a complaint. The defendant has not responded to the complaint to present its side of the case. The claims mentioned are accusations and should be considered as such until and unless proven otherwise.
Of all the things that are important to get right when you are filing a lawsuit against someone, their name seems like it should go at the top of the list, no? But, alas, a plaintiff that is suing a collection law firm for allegedly violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act couldn’t even get that right, conflating the names of two different collection law firms into one.
The background: The plaintiff was living in Ohio until September 2019 when he moved to Missouri because of financial difficulties.
- On September 19, 2019, a creditor, retained by the defendant, filed a lawsuit in Ohio state court against the plaintiff, seeking to recover an unpaid debt.
- The plaintiff was allegedly served with a copy of the summons and complaint via certified mail at his residence in Ohio — where he no longer lived, according to the complaint.
- A default judgment was entered against the plaintiff in January of 2020.
- The defendant then issued a Notice of Garnishment and served it on the plaintiff’s employer in Missouri last December.
- This March, the plaintiff’s attorney sent a letter to the defendant, informing it that the garnishment had not been registered in Missouri, making it improper. The attorney demanded that the garnishment be released and the funds that had been garnished be returned to the plaintiff.
- The defendant suffered injuries in the form of headaches and loss of sleep and was deprived of his wages. The plaintiff also needed to take time and effort to contact his attorney to inform him of the garnishment, which meant the lawyer had to draft and send the letter to the defendant.
The claims: The defendant is accused of violating Sections 1692d, 1692e(2)(A), 1692e(5), and 1692f of the FDCPA for garnishing the plaintiff’s wages without registering the garnishment in the state where the plaintiff was living.
