The Colorado Supreme Court has granted a petition filed by a consumer to hear arguments in a case she filed against a collection operation, alleging it violated Colorado’s Fair Debt Collection Practices Act when it attempted to recover an unpaid debt it had purchased from the original creditor. The Supreme Court will also decide whether the state court judge erred when it ordered a District Attorney’s office to pay the collection operations costs when responding to requests from the prosecutor.
The questions the Supreme Court will answer in the case are:
- Whether the district court erred as a matter of law in upholding the county court’s ruling that respondent proved it complied with section 5-16-111(2), C.R.S. (2024).
- Whether the district court erred as a matter of law in upholding the county court’s ruling that petitioner did not prove her counterclaims against respondent under the Colorado Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, §§ 5-16-101 to -135, C.R.S. (2024).
Section 5-16-111, C.R.S. (2024) establishes the provisions that must be followed when filing a legal action to recover an unpaid debt. Subsection (2) of that section requires that the debt buyer attach certain materials to its complaint, such as a copy of the contract or legal agreement indicating the consumer’s agreement to take on the debt, as well as evidence that the debt buyer is the legitimate owner of the debt.
Finding a copy of the state court rulings proved to be beyond my powers of online investigating, but a published report provided this summary of the case:
The debt buyer filed a collection lawsuit to collect on a $671 debt from the credit card account of the consumer. The suit alleged the consumer failed to pay the amount to the original creditor, who later sold the account to the debt collector. The consumer, in turn, filed claims alleging the debt buyer violated the Colorado Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
After a trial, Boulder County Court Judge Jonathon P. Martin found the debt buyer was the owner of the debt, despite “ambiguities, even inconsistencies in the attached documents.” He also declined to find the debt buyer violated Colorado’s debt collection law.
Last August, District Court Judge J. Keith Collins upheld that ruling on appeal. He agreed the debt buyer’s documentation of the debt “contained some ambiguity” but that the lower court judge had “considered the inconsistencies in the documents and the reliability of the documents when making its findings that the inconsistencies (do) not undermine the authenticity.”
