Find Clues Even in the Mundane
Today’s Doc of the Day might look at first glance to belong in the giant to file pile.
Lawyers come and go. Especially in a mega firm like Troutman Pepper. And it is commonplace to have an appellate law specialist handle an appeal, if one can afford one.
The name of Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC’s attorney who will handle the appeal I filed against the debt buyer intrigued me. So, I ran it through a Dogpile search.
If you run the name I used for two decades through a search engine, you would get hundreds or thousands of pages of results. Laura Lynn is popular as a first and middle name and as a first and last name. Especially for strippers. lol. I’m not kidding. I once tried and found I was in the wrong business.
Misha Tseytlin, not so common.
It was easy to discover that the attorney PRA brought on for the appeal writes for the Harvard Law Review, is a mucky-muck at the Federalist Society and was the first Solicitor General for the State of Wisconsin. Plus, he is the head appellate attorney at Troutman-Pepper.
At first glance, that is pretty intimidating.
But analyze the meaning. The PRA Group subsidiary came out the chute claiming the case was worth no more than $5,000 plus minimal costs. They put that claim in writing in an OOJ – an Offer of Judgment – before any discovery was done.
PRA has an inhouse legal department with a few thousand employees. They hire outside firms for many of the 3,000 cases they file per week in the United States.
If they think a jury would award a mere $5,000 if the judge lets the case go to a jury, why would they use anyone other than a flunky to handle the case against a 60-year-old layperson who has a health condition that saps her energy?
Well, I am that woman. Brain fog or not, my educated guess is that PRA is afraid of losing another $62,000,000 punitive damage award. And they should be.
****Fun Facts***
Judge Lee P. Rudofsky who presides on the case also wrote for the Harvard Law Review, also is entrenched in the Federalist Society, and was the first Solicitor General for the State of Arkansas.
Open Email to a Pro Se Litigant
In lieu of the Doc of the Day, I will share a couple helpful tools with you.
This is an email I sent to my new friend. Other pro se litigants, feel free to email me at bohemian_books@yahoo.com. I cannot give legal advice, but I can share experience, wisdom, tears and a few laughs.
Pleasure meeting you.
The best search tool I have is http://www.dogpile.com. It is a conglomeration of search engines including Google. The trick is to use precise language. Misha Tseytlin is much easier to find than John Smith.
If you don’t have a Westlaw subscription (about $800 per month) you can use Westlaw at the Arkansas Supreme Court Building and Bowen Law School by the Museum of Fine Art. I pull up 10 or 15 cases in an hour and email them to myself. Then when I am at the pool with my granddaughter, I can read the cases at my leisure.
You are an honor to your parents and an inspiration to me.
Cheers.
The Irony: Federal Judge Complained that Head of CFPB Is Tough to Fire
Thank you to the good people at the Alliance for Justice for providing the Doc of the Day.
This article “from the desk of Leslie Rutledge” was a Statement of Joint Quarters with input from Federal District Judge Lee P. Rudofsky.
Judge Rudofsky seems to be on an unconstitutional power grab of his own. It is nearly impossible to remove a Federal Judge, which appears to some judges to be a license to lie from the bench and throw cases.
Portfolio Recovery Associates Responded to Complaint About Their Abusive Defense Tactics
I filed a complaint with the CFPB about the PRA Group subsidiary lying in court and trying to force a nominal settlement by out-lawyering me. You can read it here.
Here is PRA’s response:
“Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC (“PRA”) investigated your complaint. We take compliance with all applicable state and federal laws very seriously. The investigation found no records supporting the allegations of misconduct or harassment, including, without limitation, that PRA or its representatives acted improperly regarding the relevant account. We closed the PRA account ending in 6049 and ceased all communications regarding collection of the PRA account unless otherwise permitted or required by applicable law. We believe that no further steps in response to your complaint or follow-up actions are required at this time.
“DESCRIPTION OF NON-MONETARY RELIEF
“In response to your dispute, we closed the PRA account ending in 6049 and ceased all communications regarding collection of the PRA account unless otherwise permitted or required by applicable law.”
That’s it. Case closed.
I was allowed to file a survey response, with no personal details, that will be posted on the CFPB website, supposedly.
Here it is. A PDF is posted below so you can download it as your Doc of the Day.
The company’s response addressed all of my issues.
No.
Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC gave a conclusionary response with no details. They failed to address my main concern, their litigation misconduct in the FDCPA case I filed against PRA. They were also able to make the account notes and documentation “under seal” so they can avoid detection of law enforcement. PRA closed my account in response to my lawsuit and set the balance to zero, but in court said I owed the money when they were collecting. The account closure letters did not say “cancelled” nor “waived” and PRA did not issue a 1099-C to me.
Consumers like me should not have to file a lawsuit to make PRA stop calling.
PRA should not demand consumers like me to fill out an intrusive identity theft / fraud letter on an alleged debt that is past the statute of limitations for legal collection and past the statute of limitations for fraud. The only purpose of the inquisition is to collect information to use to try to collect on the debt. PRA should not be able to use a refusal to fill out the fraud letter as evidence that the debt was not fraudulent, as they did in my case.
PRA should not use its superior bargaining power to strong arm a settlement offer of $5,000 from each victim and then continue to violate the FDCPA and the consent agreements with the CFPB.
I understand the company’s response to my complaint.
Yes.
I understand PRA’s response and disagree with it.
The company did what they said they would do with my complaint.
No.
Portfolio Recovery Associates said they would do nothing further with my complaint.
PRA lied when it said it closed my account “in response to [my] dispute.” They said in court that they closed my account “in light of the litigation”. In response to my dispute PRA sent the fraud / identity theft affidavit for me to fill out, even though I did not claim there was fraud. I had no idea what happened with the account because it was 10 years since the alleged charges were made and there was no documentation showing on what or where those charges were made.
PRA asked the court to make me pay their costs in my FDCPA case, in violation of 15 U.S.C. 1692(k) which only allows for costs and attorney fees where the plaintiff filed the complaint in bad faith.
Obviously, my complaint was not in bad faith, as PRA set my balance to zero and closed the account in direct response to the litigation. They also said specifically that they did not file the 1099-C because my claim of fraud was made in good faith. I have had to spend another two weeks opposing PRA’s motion and am nervous that Judge Lee P. Rudofsky, who wrote that the CFPB is on an unconstitutional power grab, will rule in PRA’s favor erroneously.
Read a Deposition Taken by Portfolio Recovery Associates and Decide for Yourself if the Case Should Have been Dismissed Summarily by Judge Lee P. Rudofsky
While you are reading, answer these questions:
- Might a reasonable juror think it more probable than not that I owed no debt to PRA? Judge Rudofsky said no reasonable juror can think that PRA bought a debt that was a clerical error or incurred by a fraudster.
- Did I, as Judge Rudofsky said, admit to incurring the debt?
- Did I present testimony that the many calls made by PRA were annoying to the point that they coerced me to tell them my personal identifiers in order to make the calls stop? Or should we allow PRA to call people, not identify themselves and demand the person called identify herself, as Judge Rudofsky ordered?
And, out of curiosity, do you think that the protection against improper search and seizure offered by the 4th Amendment applies only to search and seizures by the government, as Judge Rudofsky interprets it? Do you think you must identify yourself to everyone who asks you to, as long as the inquisitor is not dressed like a police officer?
I think Judge Lee P. Rudofsky’s opinions are preposterous.
If you are a consumer advocate who wants to fight the summary dismissal of my FDCPA claim at appeal, please contact me at TheNext55Years@gmail.com or Bohemian_books@yahoo.com.
Why Judge Lee P. Rudofsky Couldn’t Care Less What Everyday People Think of Him: Presidential Candidate Cornel West, PhD Speaks Reason
It was perplexing to me. I have the goods on Judge Rudofsky. (He failed to recuse from a case where he has the appearance of bias and impropriety. He misquoted a sentence to change the meaning. When he was caught, he admitted the sentence he quoted was inaccurate, but said the meaning of the actual sentence is even more off the actual meaning. He wrote that the CFPB was on an unconstitutional power grab, according to an article by the AFJ, but the link to his article is broken now, so it won’t be seen quite so easily.) Why didn’t he just apologize and correct himself?
Doesn’t he have aspirations to go any further in his career?
Tonight, the Genie inside my phone suggested I watch an interview with a long-shot presidential candidate, Cornel West, PhD. Dr. West doesn’t just speak; he sermonizes. I wanted to shout Amen!
Listen to him here. Please consider this your Doc of the Day.
Dr. West went to Harvard, the same school Lee Rudofsky attended. Dr. West also studied at a list of other Ivy Leagues. And he was born in 1953 and is a black man. His mother was an impressive woman, a teacher and principal, and his grandfather was a Baptist pastor.
The commonality in philosophy between me and this great thinker, besides that we see Christianity in a similar way, is that we think iniquities are driven not only by racism but by classism. There is a duopoly of the power, the Democrat and Republican parties, who cater to big business corporations and the ultra-rich.
Rudofsky doesn’t care what the everyday person thinks, because we don’t have any power and we don’t control the flow of money. My cries that the judge is anti-consumer only endears him more to the people who have enslaved the rest of us.
Don’t Let Portfolio Recovery Associates Bully You
You try to sue PRA Group, Inc’s wholly owned subsidiary for misrepresenting the amount or character of a debt it tried to collect. Or, you owed a debt, but asked PRA to stop calling you and it refused. Or, as with me, PRA refused to identify itself meaningfully, unless you would answer interrogatories on a recorded line.
Instead of letting a jury decide what the damages are, PRA tries to bully you into settlement. Most plaintiff’s attorneys who work on contingency suggest you settle for $1,000 or $5,000 and they collect $25,000 in attorney’s fees. That doesn’t seem right to you.
When you refuse to settle for the set amount, PRA digs into your personal life and makes thinly veiled threats to share your personal information with the world. The litigious debt buyer might “accidentally” post your unredacted credit report online. They did that to me. They might tell the world that you have no social security number, like they did to Guadalupe Mejia. Ms. Mejia was awarded $250,000 in emotional distress and $82 Million in punitive damages by a jury, so PRA does not always get away with their bad conduct.
If there is nothing really juicy to use to blackmail you into settlement, PRA just makes shit up. They invented a story about me that I am a degenerate poker player who lost everything playing in illegal games online. The truth is that I play like a nitty old lady and the vast majority of the time I play for fake money starting with the free promotional chips on Zynga and Poker Bros.
Please don’t give up.
Report the abusive litigation conduct to the CFPB. When you begin your report, you will be asked to choose from several categories of bad conduct. Taking advantage of uneven bargaining power in an FDCPA case is not an option. What I did was to choose one of the things that led me to file my suit. Then I told the CFPB in the opening of my narrative that my main concern was the bullying during my lawsuit.
Judge Lee Rudofsky who presided on my case is anti-consumer and anti-CFPB. His decisions forced me into appeal. Looking through all my filings in preparation reminds me of the pain PRA inflicted on me in an attempt to continue business as usual. Here is one document that you can download FREE.
The Lawyer and the Lazy Judge: How Susan Weaver Runs a Courtroom
I am not lazy. I am busy.
Today’s Doc of the Day is a link instead of a doc. Click here.
I wish I saw this article before I wrote my appellate brief for Micheal Pietrczak v. Laura Lynn, et al. Not that being right and having the best authorities helps in Arkansas. My litigation adversary represented by William Zac White of Heber Springs did not even bother to file an opposition brief and the COA has not made a ruling in the seven months since the appellee’s response was due.
The article discusses the difference between Federal court, where the judge writes the orders and judgments, and Arkansas courts, which allow the prevailing party to write the orders and judgment as a draft, and the judge usually just rubber stamps it.
Judge Susan Weaver takes it a step further. She will fail to rule on a motion if she does not like the only reasonable outcome, then use the excuse for her dereliction of duty that she is waiting on the litigant to draft the order.
But, if she wants to dismiss a counterclaim even though the counter defendant failed to file any response, she goes ahead and does that sua sponte, without giving a logical reason.
She did these things to me.
She also granted a written motion allowing Pietrczak an extension of time to serve a summons without giving me time to respond in writing and said the written order is the same as her oral order. It was not.
The article addresses this same unethical behavior. “Finally, when opposing counsel submits an order to the court, objections should be made quickly to any substance.”
I objected, but to no avail.
Court Reporter Jana Perry went along with the ploy and fictionalized what was said in the hearing. Then Judge Weaver, Attorney General Leslie Rutlege, the Court of Appeals and even federal district court judges, Billy Roy Wilson and Lee Rudofsky all made excuses why the public should not hear the recording that would not follow the transcript.
Hmmm?
A Higher Law 