What to Do If You Are a Defendant in a Collection Lawsuit

• Author: Daniel A Edelman
• Profession: Lawyer
• Pages: 61-62

61

What to Do If You

AreaDefendant

inaCollection Lawsuit

CHAPTER

15

If you find yourself the defendant in a collection lawsuit, the first thing to do is to review and comply

strictly with all deadlines and instructions in the papers you are served with. Debt collectors and collection

attorneys expect that 90 percent or more of the people they sue will default and allow a judgment to be

entered against them and that many of the

others will simply agree to pay. Once

they have a judgment, they can begin

seizing assets and wages as permitted

by state law. (Certain states, notably

Texas and Pennsylvania, do not per-

mit seizure of wages in most cases.)

Next, determine if the plaintiff

is the original creditor or a debt buyer.

Original creditors can often prove the

debt, although there are sometimes defenses

even to claims by original creditors (see following discussion). Debt buyers frequently cannot even prove

that they own or have the right to collect a debt. They often follow a business model in which they file

a hundred lawsuits, are able to serve ninety of the consumers, get default judgments against or settle-

ments from eighty-five of them, and drop the cases against the five that bother to show up and defend

themselves.

CAUTION

If you do nothing, you lose.

Edelman53574_Ch015.indd 61 22/05/17 10:26 AM