Trial that Led to $83 Million Verdict Against Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC Because of Abusive Litigation

You: Portfolio Recovery Associates called me over and over again about a debt I did not owe.

You: I owed a debt on a credit card and Portfolio Recovery called me incessantly because I refused to talk to them.

You: How do I make PRA stop calling me?

There is a law that is supposed to protect people from abusive debt collection practices. It is called the FDCPA and is codified as 15 USC 1692.

I say supposed to, because there are judges, such as Lee P. Rudofsky in the Federal District Court of Eastern Arkansas who determine what is “abusive”, “invasive” or “outrageous” without letting a jury decide.

There are other judges, such as Joel P. Fahnestock, a circuit court judge in Missouri who allowed an FDCPA case to proceed to a jury trial over the issue of damages. Judge Fahnestock made the decision that Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC violated the FDCPA as a discovery sanction. The judge did not appreciate how PRA was evasive during the FDCPA litigation discovery.

If you have a potential FDCPA case against a debt buyer, and your experience is like mine, the majority of attorneys will advise you to take the $1,000 or $5,000 settlement offer proffered by the billion-dollar company.

I decided to take PRA on myself, pro se. I want a jury to decide what punitive damages should be charged to deter Portfolio Recovery from continuing conduct that I and the CFPB find abusive.

The Goliath company that has hundreds of in-house litigation employees and hires firms such as Rose Law, of Hillary Clinton fame, fights dirty. They lie in court.

My fight is getting easier as I collect documents from prior cases against the debt collector. Hopefully you come across this blog early in your proceedings and can be guided by the work of a few excellent attorneys who didn’t go along with the PRA program.

Here is the entire transcript of a trial for which an $83,000,000 verdict was awarded against Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC.

(PRA appealed, then reached a settlement before the appellate court made a decision.)