According to a study by activists for low income communities, buyers of uncollected debt won one point one billion dollars in court judgments in the past few years. The report, compiled by four nonprofit organizations alleges that on a consistent basis, buyers of uncollected debt violate state law by filing bogus lawsuits against low income New Yorkers, many times without presenting any proof of their claims or serving individuals properly. Generally, the debt buyers will get a hold of automatic default judgments in their favor because the people that are being sued are not aware of the cases and therefore do not show up in court for their hearings.”It is obvious that the worst players heavily benefit from illegal and abusive debt collection practices,” stated the lawyer in charge of the civil practice at the Legal Aid society, one of the four non profits.
The report examined the top twenty six debt buyers in New York City’s Civil Court from January 2006 through July 2008 and found that they filed some 457,322 lawsuits and were awarded around one point one billion dollars in judgments and settlements. While sorting through a sample comprised of 365 of the lawsuits, the report discovered that the debt buyers won almost ninety five percent of the cases, generally by obtaining automatic judgments because the person who was taken to court did not show up. Out of all of the lawsuits that were studied, just ten percent of those that were sued answered the complaint.
More than fifty percent of the people with default judgments lived in predominantly Latino or black neighborhoods, and almost all lived in low or moderate income areas. Out of the twelve zip codes with the highest ratio of suits, one in four families lived below the federal poverty level.
Not one person that the report studied was represented by an attorney. Out of all of the cases, a minuscule one percent of people sued by debt buyers in New York City are represented by a lawyer, and once the judgments are entered, these people will be subjected to wage garnishment and other sorts of judgment enforcement, like frozen bank accounts.
In an interesting twist, in nearly two thirds of the cases, the debt buyers were represented by one of five local law firms, and the study charges these firms with filing suits without any proof and employing process servers that neglect to properly serve people, among other dishonest practices. The report calls upon Albany to pass a bill that would stop debt buyers from filing suit without sufficient evidence. The Assembly passed the legislation last year, but surprise surprise. It died in the Senate.
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