Pro Se Litigants Wanted for Plan to Take Down the Man, lol
Thank you to my muse who put my purpose so succinctly. She said I want to “take down the man.”
Chat GBT defined the phrase “take down the man” for me.
“The saying ‘take down the man’ is a colloquial expression that is often used in a figurative or metaphorical sense. It generally means to challenge or oppose those in positions of authority, power, or control, typically with the goal of bringing about change or addressing perceived injustices. ‘The man’ in this context typically refers to the establishment, the government, corporations, or any authority figures or entities that are seen as oppressive, corrupt, or responsible for social, political, or economic problems.
“People who use this phrase often advocate for social activism, protest, or some form of resistance to challenge and disrupt the status quo in pursuit of a more equitable or just society. It can be associated with movements for social justice, civil rights, and political change. However, the exact meaning and connotations of the phrase can vary depending on the context in which it is used and the specific goals of the individuals or groups employing it.”
Here is the beginning of a plan to move toward more social justice and civil rights by challenging and opposing those in a position of control of our economic system and judiciary, particularly corporations that rip off the common person with impunity.
If you are in the class of the bottom 98%, you have fallen victim to the abusive practices of the moneyed elite.
Sometimes the wrong is subtle. Sometimes it is slight. The man will invade your privacy or put something in the fine print on a contract of adhesion, or even change a business document using the delete button or Adobe Acrobat, and rip you off for an amount that is hardly worth the effort to fight about.
If you try to get a lawyer to recover damages for you for the small stuff, chances are the attorney will only take the case as a class action. Class actions often result in recovery of less than a dollar for each victim and millions of dollars in fees for the attorneys.
Why not cut the attorneys out? Because attorneys write the rules and attorneys say that only they can help another person or a fictitious person (a company or trust) with legal work. One class member assisting another class member is deemed the “unauthorized practice of law”.
What about this idea? Pro se litigants who were harmed by the same company, like the millions who were mentioned in the Stipulated Order between the CFPB and debt buyer Portfolio Recovery Associates, file individual suits, then petition the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to consolidate proceedings as MDL, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. sec. 1407.
According to a lawyer from Robins – Kaplan, PC: “The goal of MDLs is to avoid discovery duplication, to prevent inconsistent pretrial rulings, and to conserve the resources of the parties and the judiciary in similar cases.”
In other words, if the cases of millions or even hundreds of the company’s victims were treated as related, the victims would be allowed to pool their resources to depose company employees, high level and low level, demand production of documents and move the Court for assistance in compelling compliance with discovery requests.
The cases would remain separate. I have personally done something like this by joining with one other person as plaintiffs to a suit. We won six figures.
Here, as Doc of the Day is the complete language of 28 U.S.C. sec. 1407:
(a)
When civil actions involving one or more common questions of fact are pending in different districts, such actions may be transferred to any district for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings. Such transfers shall be made by the judicial panel on multidistrict litigation authorized by this section upon its determination that transfers for such proceedings will be for the convenience of parties and witnesses and will promote the just and efficient conduct of such actions. Each action so transferred shall be remanded by the panel at or before the conclusion of such pretrial proceedings to the district from which it was transferred unless it shall have been previously terminated: Provided, however, That the panel may separate any claim, cross-claim, counter-claim, or third-party claim and remand any of such claims before the remainder of the action is remanded.
Such coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings shall be conducted by a judge or judges to whom such actions are assigned by the judicial panel on multidistrict litigation. For this purpose, upon request of the panel, a circuit judge or a district judge may be designated and assigned temporarily for service in the transferee district by the Chief Justice of the United States or the chief judge of the circuit, as may be required, in accordance with the provisions of chapter 13 of this title. With the consent of the transferee district court, such actions may be assigned by the panel to a judge or judges of such district. The judge or judges to whom such actions are assigned, the members of the judicial panel on multidistrict litigation, and other circuit and district judges designated when needed by the panel may exercise the powers of a district judge in any district for the purpose of conducting pretrial depositions in such coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings.
(c)Proceedings for the transfer of an action under this section may be initiated by—
the judicial panel on multidistrict litigation upon its own initiative, or
motion filed with the panel by a party in any action in which transfer for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings under this section may be appropriate. A copy of such motion shall be filed in the district court in which the moving party’s action is pending.
The panel shall give notice to the parties in all actions in which transfers for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings are contemplated, and such notice shall specify the time and place of any hearing to determine whether such transfer shall be made. Orders of the panel to set a hearing and other orders of the panel issued prior to the order either directing or denying transfer shall be filed in the office of the clerk of the district court in which a transfer hearing is to be or has been held. The panel’s order of transfer shall be based upon a record of such hearing at which material evidence may be offered by any party to an action pending in any district that would be affected by the proceedings under this section, and shall be supported by findings of fact and conclusions of law based upon such record. Orders of transfer and such other orders as the panel may make thereafter shall be filed in the office of the clerk of the district court of the transferee district and shall be effective when thus filed. The clerk of the transferee district court shall forthwith transmit a certified copy of the panel’s order to transfer to the clerk of the district court from which the action is being transferred. An order denying transfer shall be filed in each district wherein there is a case pending in which the motion for transfer has been made.
The judicial panel on multidistrict litigation shall consist of seven circuit and district judges designated from time to time by the Chief Justice of the United States, no two of whom shall be from the same circuit. The concurrence of four members shall be necessary to any action by the panel.
No proceedings for review of any order of the panel may be permitted except by extraordinary writ pursuant to the provisions of title 28, section 1651, United States Code. Petitions for an extraordinary writ to review an order of the panel to set a transfer hearing and other orders of the panel issued prior to the order either directing or denying transfer shall be filed only in the court of appeals having jurisdiction over the district in which a hearing is to be or has been held. Petitions for an extraordinary writ to review an order to transfer or orders subsequent to transfer shall be filed only in the court of appeals having jurisdiction over the transferee district. There shall be no appeal or review of an order of the panel denying a motion to transfer for consolidated or coordinated proceedings.
The panel may prescribe rules for the conduct of its business not inconsistent with Acts of Congress and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
Nothing in this section shall apply to any action in which the United States or a State is a complainant arising under the antitrust laws. “Antitrust laws” [omitted]
*************
Think of MDL as a Class Action Lite.
To be continued…
How Lenders Prey on the Poor, Elderly
Press Release from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with FREE downloadable Doc of the Day
CFPB Sues Installment Lending Conglomerate for Illegally Churning Loans to Harvest Hundreds of Millions in Loan Costs and Fees
A CURO Group Holdings Company, Heights Finance, formerly known as Southern Management Corporation, induced struggling customers into a fee-harvesting and loan-churning scheme.
AUG 22, 2023
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) sued Heights Finance Holding Company, formerly known as Southern Management Corporation, a high-cost installment lender, as well as several of Heights’s subsidiaries (collectively, Southern), for illegal loan-churning practices that harvested hundreds of millions in loan costs and fees. The CFPB alleges that the company – which operates under a variety of trade names, including Covington Credit, Southern Finance, and Quick Credit – identifies borrowers who are struggling to repay their existing loans, and then aggressively pushes them to refinance. Borrowers become trapped in the loan churning scheme and often are forced to refinance multiple times. The CFPB is seeking to end Southern’s unlawful loan-churning practices, to gain redress for harmed consumers, and to require Southern to pay a civil money penalty.
“The CFPB is suing the Southern lending conglomerate for illegally churning loans and harvesting fees from their customers,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra. “What Southern sold as a financial lifeline was, in reality, pushing customers into financial quicksand.”
Southern is a nonbank, high-cost installment lender with its principal place of business in Greenville, South Carolina. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of CURO Group Holdings Corporation (NYSE:CURO), and operates more than 250 brick-and-mortar storefronts in the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina. Southern’s borrowers typically have low or fixed incomes and impaired credit. The company’s typical borrower earns less than $25,000 annually. Many of its borrowers are either older Americans living on fixed incomes or are single-parent wage earners.
CURO Group Holdings operates in the United States and Canada. The company reported total revenue of $209.2 million at the end of the second quarter for 2023. The company has steadily increased its market presence since its founding in 1997 through a series of acquisitions. It acquired Heights Finance, formerly known as Southern Management Corporation, in 2021. Southern exercised complete control over all the subsidiaries identified in the CFPB’s complaint and directed all activities, including lending activities.
Refinanced loans comprise the bulk of Southern’s loan origination volume every year. More than 70 percent of the roughly $250 million in loans that Southern makes each year are refinanced loans with the company. In fact, between 2013 and 2020, Southern held nearly 10,000 consumers in continuous, uninterrupted debt, despite predominantly offering loans of just a few months in length.
Southern strives to maximize its profits from customers who must refinance to avoid delinquency and default. Nearly 10 percent of Southern’s borrowers refinance their loans with the company a dozen times or more. While these borrowers make up just under 10 percent of Southern’s total borrower population, their refinances generate 40 percent of the company’s net revenue.
The CFPB’s lawsuit alleges that the company harms consumers by:
- Coercing distressed customers into fee-laden cycles of reborrowing: Southern’s business strategy centers on getting customers to refinance loans as early and as often as possible. The company uses an array of coercive practices to drive delinquent borrowers into fee-laden refinancing cycles. In addition to fees, these loans decrease the amount of money that borrowers can cash out and increases their total cost of borrowing with each successive refinance.
- Incentivizing employees to push refinances: Southern’s incentive-compensation programs reinforce its coercive tactics by rewarding employees who are the most successful in driving payment-stressed borrowers into refinancing and punishing those employees who do not. According to Southern’s executive leadership, “our focus when interacting with delinquent customers has not changed,” and lists refinancing as the top priority when interacting with borrowers. Refinancing is ahead of even collecting the full past-due balances on loans.
- Targeting customers for their likelihood to refinance: Southern positively weights past, repeated refinancing in their refinance-approval process. As a result, the company routinely lends to borrowers who have refinanced multiple times even if they clearly cannot afford to service their debt to Southern without refinancing.
- Falsely marketing refinances as fresh starts: Southern markets refinances as solutions, fresh starts, and best options for customers who are struggling to repay. However, for many of these customers, refinancing serves only to prolong indebtedness, to increase total borrowing costs, and to offer no long-term solution to financial distress.
Enforcement Action
Under the Consumer Financial Protection Act, the CFPB has the authority to take action against institutions violating consumer financial protection laws, including engaging in unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices. The CFPB alleges that Southern’s steering practices are unfair and abusive, and is taking action to address its wrongful practices.
Consumers can submit complaints about financial products and services by visiting the CFPB’s website or by calling (855) 411-CFPB (2372).
Employees who believe their companies have violated federal consumer financial protection laws are encouraged to send information about what they know to whistleblower@cfpb.gov. To learn more about reporting potential industry misconduct, visit the CFPB’s website.###
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a 21st century agency that implements and enforces Federal consumer financial law and ensures that markets for consumer financial products are fair, transparent, and competitive. For more information, visit consumerfinance.gov.
The Courts Fail to Treat the Non-Elite Fairly, Equally; Bar Poor and Middleclass from Success
A therapist sent this Doc of the Day, an exercise in satisfying unmet needs. I am sorry, there was no attribution.
Let’s focus on No. 16: “To be treated fairly, equally, and given an opportunity to succeed.”
The vast majority of people who represent themselves in court feel that they are treated unfairly, unequally and are doomed to failure.
The number one rule of court is that the rules “should be construed, administered, and employed by the court and the parties to secure the just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of every action and proceeding.”
Ha! That never happens!
Let’s look at one way the plebians are mistreated.
In the Federal District Court of Eastern Arkansas, attorneys are allowed to file electronically. The self-represented must print four copies of their documents, and either drive to Little Rock to file or mail the documents and hope they are received timely.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5(d)(2) states:
Nonelectronic Filing. A paper not filed electronically is filed by delivering it:
(A) to the clerk; or
(B) to a judge who agrees to accept it for filing, and who must then note the filing date on the paper and promptly send it to the clerk.
There is no definition of “delivering” in this section. Some jurisdictions specify that delivery for filing is the postmark date. It seems like a big risk to assume the postmark will be the date of filing where there is no specific rule. What if the mail never arrives? There will be no proof of the postmark. You might take a picture of the postmarked envelope at the post office. Why deal with the extra stress? It is prudent to hand deliver.
When I hand delivered last time, the clerk accidentally handed three copies of a document back to me. I called the clerk and sent an email to the judge’s clerk. Both said no need to bring the copies back to them.
One copy is used for the public box. These copies can be read by the press and other public by visiting the clerk’s office. That is a good idea, but why don’t the electronic filing attorneys need to bring in an extra paper copy?
Filing conventionally increased the costs on my case against Portfolio Recovery Associates by about $8,000, so far. PRA claims they spent about $8,000 on costs of deposing me, having transcripts printed, and copying the thousands of documents they demanded that I produce in discovery.
$8,000 is more than my total yearly pension.
As a low-income litigant, I had to choose between filing my documents or holding depositions and doing other discovery. Well, that is not really a “choice”. I am required to file the documents, or I lose.
King Antoinette Rudofsky (AKA Judge Lee P. Rudofsky) has a solution for the high costs of litigation for the commoners. He said that filing a lawsuit is the plaintiff’s “choice”. If you don’t want the high cost of litigation, just let the people who control the money walk all over you.
If you do choose to fight for your rights in court, beware! A judge like Rudofsky or Linda Lopez will do mental gymnastics to twist the facts to feign some reasonableness in forcing the poor or middle-class pro se litigant to pay the represented litigant’s costs and attorney fees.
Basically, if you choose to try to correct a wrong in court, expect to face bankruptcy.
(I have won several lawsuits against represented adversaries, but it is not easy, and most people don’t have my tenacity and aptitude for reading rules.)
Back to the purpose of this post. What can a person do to help himself move closer to getting his needs met when wronged by the moneyed elite?
Bombings and going postal are not viable options.
File a lawsuit? Not in Lee Rudofsky’s court. Not in Linda Lopez’ court. Not in Susy Weaver’s court.
(Yes, I know the courts are supposed to belong to the People, but let’s live in reality.)
Do you want to know the answer?
…to be continued
Does Black’s Law Dictionary Define “Bitch”?
Don’t expect too much from this post.
I slept a whopping 5 hours last night. This federal judge in California, Linda Lopez, gave me more needless work and I know if I didn’t spend the entire morning writing, she would order me to pay another $60,000 or so in attorney fees to my adversaries who hired $450 per hour attorneys to take on a self-represented litigant.
Really, with the idiotic rulings issued by the likes of Judge Linda Lopez and her blond twin Judge Susan Kaye Weaver in Arkansas, a sleazy litigant could get away with hiring a bozo like William Zac White and still win.
Lopez and Weaver are flip sides of the same coin… A Democrat and a Republican hypocrite.
Both are evil, unethical, conniving. Both will steal from the poor to give to their friends. I haven’t looked it up, but figure that to be the definition in Black’s Law of —-
Oh, do you want to read the documents I wrote while in a zombie like state? Here they are, your FREE Docs of the Day.
PRA Group, Inc. Spends Nearly $100,000,000 this Year on Legal Collections and Calls Me “Litigious”
“Why Is PRA Group (PRAA) Down 10.9% Since Last Earnings Report?”
– – Quote from Zacks Research on Yahoo Finance today.
Portfolio Recovery Associates, a wholly owned subsidiary of PRA Group, Inc. (symbol PRAA), spent at least $8,000 in costs and hired two premiere law firms to defend against my allegations of wrongdoing that PRA said would be worth no more than $5,000 if it went to a jury. The CFPB made similar allegations against PRA in March 2023, that PRA did to millions of people what it did to me, and PRA settled for about $24 million.
These defense costs are a drop in the bucket compared to the money the debt buyer and collector spends on legal collections. According to SEC filings, the amount spent on lawsuits against alleged debtors approaches $100 million per year. According to the deposition of a PRA representative, the company wins 90% of its cases by default.
The litigious nature of PRA Group companies is one issue that may affect investors’ perception of PRAA stock value.
Another issue, that is not immediately related to this blog is PRA Group’s propensity to borrow.
SEC filings as reported by Zacks show PRA Group has $4.3 Billion in assets and $2.7 Billion in borrowings. Do the total assets reflect the face value of the junk debt PRA purchases for pennies on the dollar?
Court documents in another case involving a different debt buyer show that an industry standard is about an 11% rate of collection on the face value of portfolios.
If you know whether PRA or debt buyers in general report assets as face value or expected revenues, please leave a comment or send a private email to bohemian_books@yahoo.com. Designate the email “background only”, “anonymous” or “for attribution”.
The reason PRA’s borrowing may become pertinent to this blog soon is that a low actual value of assets to borrowing rate is likely to lead to bankruptcy court. In bankruptcy, PRA’s portfolios would be sold to other debt buyers. And the new buyer would continue the cycle of churning junk debt by collecting from individuals who don’t have law degrees or teams of attorneys to protect them from abusive debt collection practices.
Bill Introduced That Could Increase the Number of Debt Collector Employees Willing to Rat Out Their Boss
From Congress.gov
S.1124 – Financial Compensation for CFPB Whistleblowers Act 118th Congress (2023-2024)
BILL
| Sponsor: | Sen. Cortez Masto, Catherine [D-NV] (Introduced 03/30/2023) |
|---|---|
| Committees: | Senate – Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs |
| Latest Action: | Senate – 03/30/2023 Read twice and referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. (All Actions) |
| Tracker: Tip | This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Passed Senate Passed House To President Became Law |
Summary: S.1124 — 118th Congress (2023-2024)
Shown Here:
Introduced in Senate (03/30/2023)
Financial Compensation for CFPB Whistleblowers Act
This bill requires the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to provide awards to whistleblowers who report information resulting in monetary sanctions.
Whistleblowers claiming an award are permitted to have legal representation. Anonymous whistleblowers claiming an award are required to have legal representation and must disclose their identity to the bureau. The bureau may not disclose an anonymous whistleblower’s identity except in limited circumstances, including to other government agencies in the course of an investigation.
The protections in this bill may not be waived by any employment agreement, including by a predispute arbitration agreement.
Vote for Justice Courtney Rae Hudson
“A pair of balls beats everything.” – Heard at the poker tables.
According to an article in the Arkansas Times, “Arkansas Supreme Court Associate Justice Courtney Rae Hudson announced today she is running to fill the seat vacated by Associate Justice Robin Wynne, who died while still in office earlier this year.”
Justice Hudson retains the seat she fills presently if she loses the election, and she is unopposed thus far. Still, give her your vote.
Justice Courtney Rae Hudson looks pretty and feminine. But she has a big pair.
It is a pleasure to read Justice Hudson’s opinions. We the People should reward her with whatever position works out the best for her personally.
Here is a repost of a recent opinion written by Justice Courtney Rae Hudson for you to download and enjoy.
A Higher Law 