Eighth Circuit Accepts Documentation Supplied By Untrustworthy Company
I tried to use that order in my case against Portfolio Recovery Associates. District Court Judge Rudofsky said it was not relevant. Just because PRA violated hundreds of thousands of other consumers and agreed to pay $24,000,000 in restitution and fines didn’t mean the documents they produced in my case were inaccurate, according to the big business puppet judge.
Judge Rudofsky forbid me from taking the case to a jury. The Eighth Circuit affirmed his orders.
Judge Rudofsky said I cannot disclose what is in any of the “evidence” presented by the debt collector. I can tell you it was not accurate.
Judge Rudofsky said the debt collector did not need a copy of a credit card agreement between the original creditor and me. He said there was no need for the alleged account to be referenced on a bill of sale or any other documentation. There was no credit card agreement. There was no link between a purchase made by PRA and the account associated with me.
How do you know I am telling the truth?
If I committed perjury when I made these same claims all the way up to the Supreme Court, you better believe there would be perjury charges filed against me.
Since our judges are essentially tyrants, there is a chance one will collude with a prosecutor and kangaroo court me into jail. But it would be a lot harder than what was done to me in civil court. I would be entitled to counsel, instead of representing myself. The sealed documents would be exculpatory evidence and it would be awkward for a judge to deny me the right to show the public the evidence. It would look even worse than the Star Chamber in which Judge Rudofsky ordered me to pay a full year of my pension to the billion dollar company to reimburse for the cost of their defense.
Hopefully, you have an honest judge in your case. The Arizona lawyer in the video above should be right. You should be able to use the stipulated order against Portfolio Recovery Associates to beat prosecution by them and to win an FDCPA or invasion of privacy case against them.
Do me a favor please. Don’t settle for $5,000. One jury on a similar case to mine decided PRA should pay $82,000,000 in punitive damages. And even that didn’t slow them down.
Judge Gets Off With 6 Month Suspension
Judges granted themselves absolute judicial immunity. That means when Judge Susan Weaver transfers property from an older woman to a man who put his intent to defraud the lady in writing, it is nearly impossible for the victim to receive restitution from the judge.
Government workers show a brick wall resistance to filing criminal charges on a sitting judge.
Judicial ethics commissions are a huge waste of taxpayer dollars. They are paper tigers. Lazy paper tigers that lay around all day licking their paws. They act as if the judge is going to throw them their next slab of meat, not acknowledging it is the taxpayers providing for them.
Concerned citizens, like I am, are often retaliated against for challenging the corrupt judges.
The system is designed to work beautifully. It is the people inside perverting it.
So you can verify, here is a copy of the hand written fraud letter mentioned above. It was entered as an exhibit in a motion for contempt against Attorney William Zac White that Judge Weaver denied inexplicably.
On my to do list, the court records about the fraudster, whose name is spelled as in this letter, “Micheal”, have most or all been changed to “Michael” by the various court clerks. This appears to be a way to help Micheal Pietrczak, a felon for using false documents at the border, to deter people from learning the truth about him. One must ask why there was an orchestrated effort by court personnel to do this dirty deed.
The Court and Big Business Billionaire Defendant Allowed to Discuss Sealed Documents on Public Record: Mums the Word for Pro Se Plaintiff
In a case against the most annoying and offensive debt collector, Portfolio Recovery Associates, Judge Lee P. Rudofsky made it clear that the pro se plaintiff, me, was not allowed to discuss sealed documents on the public record.
After Judge Rudofsky finally recused himself, the fresh judge reiterated the threat of sanctions for disclosure of sealed evidence.
But Judge Rudofsky and Portfolio Recovery Associates repeatedly violated their own call for the cone of silence.
Here is a copy (that you can download for free) of plaintiff’s deposition redacted by Portfolio Recovery Associates. They were supposed to redact mentions of the sealed documents – but they didn’t.
For example, look at page 77, line 7. PRA attorney James Trefil of huge defense firm Troutman Pepper starts discussing Exhibits 9, 10 and 11. PRA marked those “CONFIDENTIAL” and filed under seal. There is one short redacted section, then Mr. Trefil asks about the specific data from Exhibit 9.
That is not keeping sealed documents confidential.
Worse, Portfolio Recovery disclosed what was supposedly on a document I designated as “CONFIDENTIAL”. On page 116, line 17. Mr. Trefil: “For the record, this is a confidential document.
This is plaintiff’s credit report. Are you familiar with this document?” His next sentence: “Do you see where says it Midland Credit [?]”
Wow! That is not keeping it confidential. And without seeing the entire document, it is misleading. But Mr. Trefil on behalf of Portfolio Recovery Associates did not stop at just insinuating there were debts showing on my credit report.
“So what debt of yours does Midland Credit Management hold?”
“None [!]”
“It’s showing up on your credit report.”
Liar! “It says, ‘The listing of a company’s inquiry in this section means that they obtained information from your credit file in connection with an account review or other business transaction with you. These inquiries are not seen by anyone but you. They will not be used in scoring your credit file except insurance companies may have access,’ blah, blah, blah about the insurance companies. So I don’t know why they made a soft inquiry, but Portfolio Recovery also made a soft inquiry and it’s on the same report, isn’t it?”
“I don’t see Portfolio on this report. I might just be missing it.”
“Did I give you both? I got two — I contacted all three credit agencies, but I only got two reports back and I don’t think this is the one that has Portfolio Recovery on it. I think it’s the other one. Yeah, Portfolio Recovery made a soft inquiry on November 1, 2019. So Midland just is like Portfolio, a –“
“My question is what debt of yours does Midland hold?”
“None that I’m aware of.”
“All right. But you acknowledge they are showing up on your credit report?”
“As a soft inquiry.”
“Understood.”
“They’re allowed to — anybody can look me up. In fact, that might be the way that companies like Portfolio Recovery find their marks is they go in and they look at people’s credit reports and then they contact them and say, hey, you owe us $2,297.63. How do you want to pay for that? And they have — because they have access to these credit reports, they have a whole mess of information about you, so they’re –“
Trefil interrupted my lecture. “What about Enhanced Recovery Company?”
“Same thing. I have no clue who they are. I don’t have any debt, and so they could look.”
“So it’s your sworn testimony here today under oath that you currently have no delinquent debt?”
“I am not aware of any delinquent debt. I have found out –” Another interesting topic comes up from this statement, which will be discussed in a later post. For now it segues into more of the defense divulging what was in its own confidential documents.
“You sound an awful lot like the Capital One representative who wasn’t aware of any mistakes.”
“That what?”
“In the affidavit of sale, [Exhibit 11] you were complaining that the Capital One representative was saying he wasn’t aware of any mistakes in the records that they were giving.”
So here, PRA is telling the public what was said in the “CONFIDENTIAL” affidavit of sale.
In a bigger picture, Judge Rudofsky told the public what was supposedly said in the confidential, sealed documents. He represented that I agreed to owing the debt. He represented that there was accurate records that showed PRA did not call an annoying or harassing number of times. He said that the evidence under seal was so strong, no reasonable juror could disagree with him.
If we were playing poker, I would say PRA bluffed, then Judge Rudofsky as the casino forced me to fold my hand for a manufactured reason, allowing PRA to avoid showing its hand.
The Eighth Circuit upheld that dishonest service and the United States Supreme Court denied my petition for writ of cert and did not mention my motion to unseal the documents on the docket. 24M44.
Here is the motion that was labeled a motion to seal and was “granted”. Despite the record appearing to grant the motion in full, SCOTUS did not unseal the documents. The highest court in the country behaved as if the motion did not request unsealing and ignored the request.
Portfolio Recovery Associates and Other Big Business Billionaires Often Destroy Documents
In my case against Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of PRA Group, Inc. (stock symbol PRAA), Judge Lee P. Rudofsky, the Eighth Circuit and the United States Supreme Court allowed PRA to designate anything and everything it wanted to as “CONFIDENTIAL” and file under seal.
I cannot say what was in the allegedly top secret documents. But I can tell you what was not in them.
There was no evidence of purchases made by me on a credit card. There was no documentation that linked the specific account with a purchase agreement. There was no credit card agreement. There was no third party documentation of the phone calls made by the debt collector to numbers it associated with me. There was nothing that indicated that I agreed I owed the alleged debt.
Worse, there were not consistent records kept by PRA. The data presented was not consistent between any of the supposedly top secret evidence. In other words, one top secret document says one thing, another says another.
This is unfortunately common business practice. For example, I did business with Advantage Service Holdings, LLC d/b/a Advantage Service Company in Arkansas. Advantage installed a forced air unit in my home. The technician did not give me a written warranty. The unit failed quickly. Then Advantage and the manufacturer, Goodman, claimed the “limited warranty” excused them from any technical difficulties.
Neither Advantage, Goodman or the resale outlet gave me a limited warranty, even though I asked the installer for one. Instead, the technician wrote “warranty” on the invoice, with the number of years for compressor, parts, labor and service. In Arkansas State Court, I entered a copy of my invoice as exhibit 2.
I also entered a copy of the invoice Advantage altered. They added a checklist that represented that the technician gave me the “docs”. Scroll down to page 7. Compare to the original invoice above.
The judge on that case dismissed without allowing for a jury trial. It shocks the conscience that so many judges rubberstamp motions to dismiss and motions for summary judgment in favor of Big Business Billionaires like Goodman Manufacturing and Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC, while staring at the face of obvious alterations of documentation.
We need A New America For the People.*
*My son Buddy Lynn had a tragic life, destroyed by corrupt judges and their cronies. The week before his death, he started a TikTok channel called “New America for the People”. I am dedicating my work for justice for the common person to Buddy Lynn. You can see my YouTube channel renamed in honor of Buddy here.
Dueling (Proposed) Orders: Will Judge Susan Weaver Demand Consumer Abide By A Non-Consensual Contract of Adhesion?
First American Home Warranty sold me a policy, paid through escrow, without ever letting me review the contract. When the contract came in the mail, it was too late to switch to another company. The forced air unit in the house I bought failed within days of moving in.
The two companies First American referred me to for my repair or replacement both show on the Arkansas Secretary of State website as status “revoked”.
The work was not completed by First American’s choices, and eventually I paid for the replacement of the unit myself.
Then I had the misfortune of Judge Susan Weaver presiding over the case I filed.
Judge Weaver acted like she has never heard of the elements of a contract, meeting of the minds, or rescission. She ordered me to use binding arbitration, because there was an arbitration clause in the contract that I did not consent to but attached to my complaint as an exhibit. If I had not attached the disturbing contract, it is likely Judge Weaver would dismiss my case for violation of the rule that requires attachment, Ark. R. Civ. Pro. 10(d).
“Required Exhibits. A copy of any written instrument or document upon which a claim or defense is based shall be attached as an exhibit to the pleading in which such claim or defense is averred unless good cause is shown for its absence in such pleading.” Rule 10 – Form of Pleadings, Ark. R. Civ. P. 10
As per the analysis of this language by ChatGPT: “Yes, even if you did not consent to the contract, Rule 10(d) of the Arkansas Rules of Civil Procedure still generally requires that a copy of the disputed contract be attached to the complaint if the claim is based on it. The purpose of this rule is to ensure that all parties and the court have access to the document at issue.
“However, your lack of consent to the contract could be a key argument in your case. If you are disputing the validity of the contract—for example, arguing that you never agreed to it, that it was fraudulent, or that it is otherwise unenforceable—you would still need to reference and challenge the contract within your pleadings. Attaching the contract does not concede its validity; rather, it allows the court to evaluate your objections to it.
“If you are the plaintiff challenging the contract’s validity, you may still need to attach it to show what you are disputing. If you are the defendant responding to a claim based on the contract, you are not required to attach it, but you can argue against its enforceability.”
I filed a motion to continue the case on the docket until the propriety of recusal of Judge Weaver is determined by a higher court. Alternatively, I am willing to use arbitration if it is non-binding and is not pursuant to the contractual limitations.
Here is my motion:
Here is the exhibit to the motion:
Here are the orders proposed by First American Home Warranty’s attorney and by me.
FREE Doc of the Day
Do you think consumers should be forced to adhere to contracts of adhesion that are not provided for the consumer’s review before paying for a home warranty? Judge Susan Weaver apparently does.
Repeat Offender Portfolio Recovery Associates Celebrates Victory After SCOTUS Denies Cert
Others have had victories against Portfolio Recovery Associates in lawsuits for the violation of the FDCPA.
Unfortunately, most victims settle for $5,000 or so. See this news video about one recent “victory”.
I refused to settle for $5,000. Trump nominee Judge Lee P. Rudofsky granted PRA summary judgment against me, so I end up with nothing and even have to pay PRA’s costs.
This is a pattern for Judge Rudofsky. If an alleged debtor has no legal obligation to pay the alleged debt, Rudofsky will call a case against PRA for invasion of privacy or violation of the FDCPA a “victory lap” and dismiss the case. As in my case, he is known to manufacture evidence that the debt was actually owed.
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote one paragraph addressing Judge Rude’s order for summary judgment. Their words elicited a vision of Pinocchio standing on the stage, applauding himself and the audience. “Yes! Yes! Everything He said is right! Nothing Laura said is right. That is our omniscient opinion.”
My petition for writ of cert to SCOTUS was denied. (About 0.0001% of Pro Se petitions are granted, so it was no surprise.)
Would I hold out for more than $5,000 next time? Damn straight I would! First, now I can file a complaint to the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights. Also, a billionaire is not going to feel a $5,000 damage award. It is not a win if it doesn’t hurt them.
Delay, Deny, Depose: How Debt Collection and Health Care Costs are Interconnected
Debt collectors are probably the most litigious abusers of our court system. They tax public resources with each and every case they file. Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC files about 3,000 collection suits per week, according to information from the CFPB and depositions. The costs to the court for facilities and personnel far outweigh the cost of reaching a non-default judgment. (Which might be why the courts act like a mill, churning out defaults in favor of the debt collector.)
When individuals file pro se suits against the debt collector for violation of the FDCPA and invasion of privacy, the company will fight to keep the case away from a jury. Certain judges, like Trump nominee Lee P. Rudofsky have a pro big business agenda. In my case, PRA was allowed to file anything and everything it wanted to under seal, hiding the evidence that it had no legitimate defense.
Infamous Insurer United Health got called out and stopped from using this same tactic. (See this post.)
There is a connection between debt collectors and health care. Coverage for costs that are denied by insurers are borne by the insured, or the insured goes without care.
Insurance companies wield their mighty power with the medical providers to obtain “member discounts” for the price of care. Some providers, such as UAMS in Arkansas, act like piranhas when they sniff out an uninsured potential patient. For example, one man was brought to UAMS for a traumatic brain injury. He was uninsured. UAMS held him against his will for two weeks, restraining him with physical and chemical restraints. After allowing him to leave “against medical advice”, UAMS sent a bill for over $46,000. By the grace of God, the newly disabled man qualified for retroactive insurance. All of a sudden, the bill was reduced to about $20,000.
Had the non-consenting patient been stuck with the $46,000 bill, it would have gone to collections. It may have been sold to a debt buyer for pennies on the dollar. Years or a decade latter, had the man not kept meticulous records, or prevailed in a suit against the hospital, the debt collector would revictimize the man.
If sued, the debt collector would be likely to deny making phone calls repeatedly. There is a good chance there would be falsified affidavits and falsified self-generated business records. UAMS has already destroyed evidence and falsified records. Debt collectors including Portfolio Recovery are known by the CFPB and several state attorney generals to falsify affidavits and base decisions to collect on inadequate records.
If any litigation concerning the medical debt is brought in the Eighth Circuit, it is highly likely the debt collector will prevail or settle for an amount that makes the “cost of doing business as usual” an acceptable risk.
Just ask PRA Group, Inc. former chief risk and compliance officer Laura White or present officer Keith Warren.
Portfolio Recovery Associates Another United Health – Hiding the Facts from the Public
This is a quote from an email I sent to attorneys for Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC. They were a defendant in an invasion of privacy and FDCPA claim. Judge Lee P. Rudofsky granted PRA summary judgment, costs and confidentiality of anything and everything PRA wanted to keep under wraps.
“Health insurance company’s interest in sealing, on motion to stay Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) suit against it, documents including written discovery, dates of phone calls to plaintiff, how it had obtained cell phone number called, and call logs, was not outweighed by public’s right of access to judicial records; insurance company designated the information as proprietary and made bald assertions of competitive harm, but none of the information contained any proprietary or sensitive information that would place insurance company at a competitive disadvantage if it were unsealed. Communications Act of 1934 § 227, 47 U.S.C.A. § 227.”
Marden’s Ark, Inc. v. UnitedHealth Grp., Inc., 534 F. Supp. 3d 1038 (D. Minn. 2021)
Hopefully a journalist organization or public interest group will file a suit to unseal the documents in Hammett v. Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC,, Eastern District of Arkansas case 4:21-cv-00189-BSM. (Judge Rudofsky finally recused himself while my petition for writ of certiorari to SCOTUS was pending, 24-6113.)
