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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.
Is not showing up for the collection lawsuit you filed against a consumer grounds for a violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act? One consumer in Alabama thinks so.
A consumer is suing a debt buyer, alleging it used a state court collection action as a coercion tool it never intended to prove. The debt buyer removed the case to the District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
The background: According to the complaint, the defendant filed a collection lawsuit against the plaintiff last August. When the consumer did not initially respond, the debt buyer moved for a default judgment, and the court granted it. The consumer moved to vacate, and the court set the matter for trial.
- That is where the case turned. The debt buyer did not appear for the trial.
- The court, in what the complaint characterizes as an unusual accommodation, reset the trial for a week later rather than ruling against the absent collector.
- The debt buyer again failed to appear, and the court dismissed the underlying collection action without prejudice.
- The consumer alleges he never owed the debt and that the debt buyer never produced competent evidence to substantiate the validity of the account, its ownership of the debt, or how the balance was calculated.
The claims: The consumer brings a single count under the FDCPA, alleging violations of Sections 1692d, 1692e, 1692e(10), 1692f and 1692f(1), along with related provisions of Regulation F.
- The theory threaded through the complaint is that the debt buyer filed and pursued the collection suit not to win it but to pressure an unrepresented consumer into paying through fear of trial, an approach the complaint frames as part of a broader pattern of filing high volumes of collection actions to harvest default judgments.
