A County Court judge in Florida has entered a judgment of more than $16,000 for a debt buyer following a trial on an account stated claim, ruling that a corporate representative trained on an original creditor’s mailing and emailing practices could establish that statements were sent to the consumer even though she never worked for that creditor, and that the consumer’s professed confusion over what an email is did not rebut that evidence.
The background: The plaintiff purchased the defendant’s credit card account and sued to collect the unpaid balance. The defendant had received her statements first by regular mail and later, at her own request, by email, and made payments on the account for several years.
- The defendant stopped paying in November 2020 after losing income and becoming ill, an explanation the judge found credible.
- The defendant admitted she never disputed any statement on the account until May 2023.
The ruling: Judge Andrea K. Totten of the County Court for Flagler County, Florida, found the plaintiff proved every element of an account stated claim, with proof that statements were actually rendered being “the primary subject of dispute at trial.” The judge acknowledged that a Florida appellate decision, Spencer v. Ditech Financial, said a witness testifying to routine mailing practices “must be employed by the entity drafting the letter,” but concluded the cases Spencer relied on stood only for the “uncontroversial proposition” that a letter’s existence does not prove it was mailed, and that later decisions from the same appellate court walked Spencer back, requiring only that a witness be “well enough acquainted with the activity to give the testimony.”
- The plaintiff’s representative qualified because she was specifically trained on how the lender issued credit, received payments, sent monthly statements, and kept its records. The judge rejected the suggestion that the lender’s practices might have changed between the time the defendant claimed she stopped receiving statements and the time of the witness’s training, writing that once the plaintiff met its burden, “it became [the defendant’s] responsibility to rebut the evidence through more than mere conjecture.”
- The judge found the defendant’s testimony partly credible and partly not, singling out her “repeated attempts to distinguish between [email] alerts and emails.” Her “seeming lack of understanding of the nature of email and electronically provided account statements appeared feigned,” the judge wrote, noting the emails she described as mere payment-posted notices also told her when payments were scheduled and how to review her account through a link. Nor did the judge believe the defendant received most communications from the lender and the plaintiff “but not the ones most relevant to [the plaintiff’s] cause of action.”
- Judgment was entered for $16,488.68, the balance on the final statement, with the judge reserving jurisdiction over attorney’s fees and costs.
