USING FEDERAL CONSUMER STATUTES
TO HELP YOUR BANKRUPTCY CLIENT
By Rex C. Anderson
Law Offices of Rex Anderson PC
R
ecently my phone has been
ringing off the hook with
consumers worried about
debt collectors. The most common
complaints involve attempts to
collect inflated balances, collecting
on debts already paid (by wage
or tax garnishments), suing on
time barred debts, collecting debts
discharged in bankruptcy or never
owed in the first place, i.e. debts
of family members both living and
deceased.
In a day and age, where trillions
of dollars of “charged off” debt
are being bought, sold and
collected upon, I guess it should
not be surprising that there are
a few unscrupulous players out
there. This past week, JP Morgan
Chase agreed to pay $136M to
federal and state regulators for its
involvement in the lying, stealing
and cheating that is rampant in
the fastest growing sector of our
nation’s economy since the 2008.
It’s the debt buying industry.
See the JP Morgan Chase story
- http://www.chicagotribune.com/
business/breaking/ct-chasesettlement-0709-biz-20150708story.html.
Although
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people
should
be
CONSUMER BANKRUPTCY JOURNAL
responsible and pay their just and
owing debts, it is nevertheless
illegal for debt collectors to use
abusive, harassing, deceptive and
unfair collection practices. In 1977,
Congress decided that the debt
collection industry had run amok
for long enough and that it needed
to be regulated by a uniform
federal law. After many months
of testimony, investigation and
hearings, Congress found:
“There is abundant evidence of
the use of abusive, deceptive, and
unfair debt collection practices by
many debt collectors. Abusive debt
collection practices contribute to the
number of personal bankruptcies,
to marital instability, to the loss of
jobs, and to invasions of individual
privacy … Means other than
misrepresentation or other abusive
debt collection practices are
available for the effective collection
of debt s …
Congress delegated to consumers
and private consumer attorneys
the task of enforcing the Fair Debt
Collection Practice Act (FDCPA).
This law requires debt collectors to
treat you, me or anyone else who
owes a debt with respect, dignity,
truth and fairness. The FDCPA also
protects innocent family members,
Winter 2015
employers and other third parties strangers to the debt, from collection
harassment. Significantly, one of
the primary purposes of the FDCPA
was to protect reputable collection
agencies from being competitively
disadvantaged.
The FDCPA requires a debt
collector, found guilty of violations,
to pay actual and/or statutory
damages along with the consumer’s
attorney fees. As such, it is possible
in many FDCPA cases for the
consumer to negotiate resolution
of the underlying debt while at the
same time using a “free” lawyer
to accomplish this. The FDCPA
is about regulating collectors
and requiring debt collectors to
comply with the law and whether
the consumer is a “deadbeat” is
irrelevant.
The
Telephone
Consumer
Protection Act (TCPA), is another
federal consumer (gem of a) law
designed to protect our privacy
rights and allow consumers to
choose how debt collectors may
contact them. (No time to discuss
telemarketers in this article). The
law permits debt collectors to use
computer generated collection calls
(robo-dialers with pre-recorded/
artificial voice messages) to
National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys