What do I do if a lawyer ignores my response to their collection letters?

“I got a collection letter from a lawyer. I disputed it and got no response and then I got sued.”

Short answer is this normally violates the FDCPA (Fair Debt Collection Practices Act) as the lawyer should have responded to your dispute letter before suing.

Want the slightly longer answer.  🙂

Here’s a recent example that shows the FDCPA being violated by CACH

Let me give you a typical example. You have a debt buyer that’s called CACH.

They basically have these collection law firms around the nation. I don’t know all the inner workings of it, but it seems like these collection law firms just basically rent their letterhead. Instead of you getting a letter from CACH, you start getting collection letters.  This makes the matter more serious since it is from a collection lawyer out of state.

So you you write them a letter disputing the debt. You have 30 days after receiving the first collection lawyer letter. (Please note:  You can actually do it after that, but to be strict about the rules you have at least the 30 day period from when you first got that letter to write and go, “Look, I dispute this debt.”)

If you dispute that debt then they have to give you what’s sometimes called validation if they want to continue to collect.

Here’s why I am emphasizing “if” they want to continue to collect.  So you can write a collection agency, a collection lawyer and say, “Look, I dispute owing this debt. Give me proof.” They don’t have to do anything, but they better not collect against you if they do nothing.

Here’s what we see all the time.  You get the collection letter from the collection law firm, say from Louisville. You write them a dispute letter that says “I dispute this debt. I don’t know who in the world you are. Who is CACH? Send me proof.”

They do nothing.

Then three months later they sue you.

That violates the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the FDCPA.

Again, if you dispute it and particularly ask for validation, they don’t have to do anything, but if they do nothing they can’t collect against you or they normally violate the FDCPA.

If they want to collect, they better validate that debt — now what they have to do in a validation letter is beyond the scope of this article.  But to put it simply, the collection lawyer (or the debt collector) must address your dispute.

The way we fix this problem of suing you after ignoring your dispute letter is by suing the debt collector — the debt buyer (Asset Acceptance, CACH, LVNV, Midland Funding, etc).  Ironically, the best way to stop them from suing you or others in the future illegally is to sue the bad guys in Federal Court — that gets their attention quickly….

If we can help you give us a call at 205-879-2447 or contact us through our website here.

Thanks!

John Watts