If you have been sued on a credit card debt or other debt, you may believe you can do nothing to keep a Judgment from being entered against you. That’s not necessarily true.
Just because you owe someone money does not mean they can get a judgment against you. This is especially true when a debt collector has sued you. In many cases, they have very little information about the debts on which they file suit; typically just a line of data in a computer file and a handful of form documents. In some cases the original creditor has discarded these documents. Some of the most active debt collection lawsuit filers in the Dallas/Fort Worth Area include:
- Unifund CCR Partners
- Asset Acceptance LLC
- CACV of Colorado
- CACH of Colorado
- LVNV Funding, LLC
- Resurgence Financial LLC
- Equable Ascent Financial, LLC (formally Hilco Receivables)
- Portfolio Recovery
- Midland Funding
- Capital One Bank, N.A.
- Citibank (South Dakota), N.A.
- Citibank, N.A.
- American Express Centurion Bank, N.A.
- Target National Bank
- Dodeka, LLC
- Pharia, LLC
- FIA Card Services
- Unifund
- Chase Bank
- Wells Fargo Bank, NA
- State Farm Bank
- Discover Bank
- Bluebonnet Financial Assets
- Riverwalk Holdings
- Main Street Acquisition Corp.
- GE Money Bank
- Palisades Collections
As of January 2013, I defended over 1000 lawsuits filed by creditors listed above. Feel free to check out our Results page for details on the credit card cases that we handled from 2007 through 2012. In the vast majority of our cases, our clients do not have a defense to the lawsuit and yet, we are able to resolve the suit for our clients. Unfortunately, things like fear, misinformation, and the perceived high cost of legal assistance keep people from hiring a lawyer and many of these credit card suits result in Judgments without a trial because the person sued does not properly and/or timely respond to the lawsuit. We feel so strongly about defending consumers in these type of lawsuits that we routinely speak on this topic and train other lawyers on how to defend a credit card case.
Our legal system requires the creditor that is suing you to prove each element of its case by a preponderance of the evidence. In lawyer words: the creditor or debt buyer bear the burden of proof. It is not required that you prove anything. When we defend a debt case, one of the first things we do is send a discovery request asking for all the documents the company needs to prove up its case. It is rare that we get a complete response, especially if the person suing you is a debt buyer.
If you hire us, we will defend your case. If you choose to settle, we will work to negotiate a settlement that is satisfactory to you. We charge a flat fee to defend consumers from standard cases. The fee varies depending on the county, case type, and in some cases the amount of the debt sued upon. The fee is sometimes higher if the client comes to us late and we have to fix things that have gone wrong in the case. If you can’t afford to pay the fee all at once, we offer a payment plan that let’s you split the fee into 3 monthly payments. The About Our Fees page contains more information.
If you have been sued in a county or district court, you have until the first Monday following the expiration of 20 days from the date you were served to file an answer. If you were sued in justice of the peace court, you have until the first Monday following the expiration of 10 days from the date you were served to file your answer. If you fail to file a timely answer, the Court may enter a Judgment against you for that reason alone. This can happen even if you have a valid defense to the claim. The creditor suing you may not have to offer any evidence against you other than your failure to properly respond.
Many creditors also include request for admissions in their lawsuits. If you fail to properly respond, the Court may also enter a Judgment against you for that reason alone, even if you properly answered the lawsuit.
Call us today. We can help protect your rights against someone who may be trying to take advantage of you. Don’t wait until the deadlines pass or hearings have been set to contact us to help you. If you wait too long, we may have to charge more in order to reverse any damage caused by the delay.