The Court of Appeals of Indiana has affirmed a lower court’s ruling granting summary judgment to a debt buyer, rejecting a consumer’s arguments that the debt buyer failed to prove it owned the account and holding that filing a response one day late, even for health reasons, was not enough to undo the judgment.
The background: The defendant, a consumer, opened a charge account with a lender in 2020 and stopped making payments, leaving a balance of $13,394.03.
- The lender sold a portfolio of accounts to the plaintiff in 2024. The bill of sale identified the portfolio as the “July 2024 Costco Fresh Flow Accounts,” and an excerpt from the accompanying asset schedule listed the defendant’s name, address, account number, and balance.
- Last year, the plaintiff filed suit to collect the balance, alleging the defendant had received billing statements showing the amount due and never objected to them.
- The plaintiff moved for summary judgment, backed by an affidavit of debt, the bill of sale and asset schedule, an employee affidavit, and months of billing statements, including the final statement showing the full balance.
- The defendant, who represented himself, filed his response one day past the deadline, which he attributed to a health issue and a mistake about the response window. In January, the trial court granted the motion, noting the defendant had failed to respond, and later denied his motions to correct error and for relief from judgment.
The ruling: The Appeals Court affirmed the judgment in favor of the plaintiff.
- On the defendant’s chain-of-title argument, the court held the plaintiff’s designated evidence, tying the defendant’s specific account to the portfolio identified in the bill of sale, was enough to shift the burden to the defendant, who never designated any contrary evidence because his response was untimely.
- On the account stated claim, the court noted that the amount on a billing statement “is prima facie proof of the amount owed on the account.” The defendant argued his minimum payment had jumped nearly 300% between two billing cycles and that he had disputed it with the lender, but the court observed that those statements came more than six months before the final statement and that “simply challenging the minimum amount owed on a debt does not equate to a challenge that the balance on the account is incorrect.”
- The court also rejected the defendant’s bid to set aside the judgment based on his one-day-late filing, writing that he offered only “the bald statement” that he had meritorious defenses without ever explaining what they were or how a trial on the merits would come out differently.
- The court reminded the defendant that self-represented litigants “are held to the same legal standards as licensed attorneys” and must accept the consequences of failing to follow procedural rules.
