FREE Downloadable Documents from FDCPA Case
My appellate brief challenging Judge Lee P. Rudofsky for granting summary judgment to defendant Portfolio Recovery Associates is due in about 49 days.
I need to file a motion to change privacy designations soon, so don’t have time to chat with you, my dear readers.
In lieu I am offering to you two documents pulled from PACER yesterday.
One is my reply to my motion for partial summary judgment. The gist is that when a debt collector agrees to zero out an account without an order from a court and does not issue a 1099-C cancellation of debt, the debt collector is admitting that the person named on the account is not liable for the alleged debt.
Portfolio Recovery Associates claimed that it just decided to zero out the debt “in light of the litigation”, and they admitted that my claim that I owed no debt was made in “good faith”, but Judge Rudofsky interpreted that to mean PRA “waived” the debt.
The second document talks about why the business records that showed my account details should not be kept confidential. Judge Rudofsky allowed for me to make the comment about the waiver and 1099-C issue, but made it clear that if I step over the line he will hit me with paying the debt buyer’s attorney fees.
If you have business documents generated by PRA that are not ordered confidential by a court, please share them with other readers by emailing a copy to bohemian_books@yahoo.com. Together we can show that, as the CFPB complained, PRA lying on affidavits in court and making collection efforts on an invalid debt is commonplace and therefore awards and settlements on state cases and FDCPA cases against Portfolio Recovery should be much higher than the usual $1,000 or $5,000 they get away with.
Help Build a Public Library of Court Documents Free of Charge to Yourself
Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.
Our courts are supposed to be transparent and accessible to the public. Most are not.
For instance, the Federal District Courts use an electronic filing system called PACER. Public Access to Court Electronic Records is not paid for in full by tax dollars and filing fees. Citizens are charged 10 cents per page to view and download documents.
There is a cap of $3.00 per document for most filings. (Transcripts have no cap.) And each person is forgiven their charges if they do not exceed $30 per quarter.
If you are a litigant in a case and use electronic filing, which requires a PACER account, you receive one free access to each document in your case that does not count toward your quarterly charges.
Some courts, including the Federal Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, won’t let non-attorneys who represent themselves file electronically. This seems to be a violation of the right to equal protection. A pro se litigant is required to print four copies of each document she files and drive it to the courthouse or mail it and hope it arrives and is acceptable to the clerk.
Let’s say you file 100 documents, each 25 pages. That is 10,000 pages at 10 cents each to copy, which equals an expense your represented opponent does not have equal to $1,000 for copies. Delivery to the clerk, whether by mail or in person, is approximately $30, so another $3,000.
If the judge lets your opponent designate material as “Confidential”, then you need to file another set of redacted copies.
If you want a file stamped copy for your records, in case something gets changed down the way, which has happened to me, you must include the download in your quarterly charges.
For someone like me who lives on a $639 per month pension, the costs of filing can use up her entire annual income.
The electronic filing manual and Local Rules contradict each other. The former forbids any access to electronic filing by non-attorneys. The later makes it permissible but only by filing a motion and having that motion approved. I filed such a motion and Judge Lee P. Rudofsky denied it. (See the Doc of the Day, at the bottom of this post.)
Judges like Lee P. Rudofsky and Billy Roy Wilson are deceptive or flat out lie about what a pro se litigant wrote in their filings when supporting the Corrupt Judicial Officer’s opinion. The ordinary person can’t afford to pull up all the documents that were the basis for the opinion, at 10 cents per page. So, few will see what was actually written or said in depositions and hearings.
The law libraries in Arkansas do not provide free PACER access to patrons. The libraries are not given free access and cannot absorb the cost.
In the Eastern District of Arkansas, you can pull up the documents for free at the kiosk in the clerk’s office. This means you must do your research during business hours. They do not allow you to load the documents onto a thumb drive or other electronic storage. It costs 10 cents per page to get paper printouts of the documents you might want to quote.
If you happen to have documents with a PACER file stamp, please send them by email to bohemian_books@yahoo.com. They will be featured as “Doc of the Day” for FREE download by the rest of us.
Think about signing up for PACER, which is free, and let me know if you want some ideas on how to spend your $30 worth of free downloads. Your service to our country will be appreciated.
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Pop Quiz: Who said, “let them eat cake”?
A. Judge Lee P. Rudofsky
B. Marie Antoinette
C. Both of the above.
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Docs of the Day:
The Chevron Doctrine and the Hypocrisy of Federal District Judge Lee P. Rudofsky
The Doc of the Day is a link to an article posted on Defense firm Taft/’s website and reprinted on Lexology. If you are going to fight for your rights and be part of the movement to give access to our courts to the ordinary working person, you should sign up for daily emails from Lexology. It is free.
It is important when debating to understand your opponent’s argument, even before your opponent makes that argument. (I was on debate team throughout college and while at Taft High School, coincidentally named, which had one of the finest academic records for a public school in the nation.)
You don’t need to agree with your opponents to listen to what they have to say.
The Taft/ author, Sohan Dasgupta, Ph.D., got it all wrong. Judge Lee P. Rudofsky makes the same mistake.
Dasgupta claimed the defenders of Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. NRDC “maintain that the federal agency in question knows best what the statute it routinely applies means. Unsurprisingly, that assurance does not satisfy Chevron’s detractors. Even if that is an accurate understanding of administrative practice, Chevron’s critics contend, this abdication of the judicial role allows the executive to color outside its lane and to set aside any concern about democratic accountability.”
First, I must edit the Doctor of Philosophy’s prose. He mixed metaphors. Either the executive colors outside the lines or drives outside his lane, not both.
Back to the legal principals behind the Chevron Doctrine. Critics like Judge Rudofsky don’t really want the executive to stay in his lane; The supposedly “Federalist” judges want exclusive use of the road.
As explained by Dr. Dasgupta, the Chevron “doctrine stands for the overall proposition that unless a federal agency’s interpretation of a statute is unreasonable, the agency effectively gets to decide what an ambiguous statute means. Federal judges must, in those circumstances, heed the determinations of executive branch bureaucrats, both in executive agencies and independent ones.”
He continues that Chevron’s critics “sometimes also believe that the executive branch has its own tendentious view of the law, which will affect its interpretation — a deficiency from which neutral federal judges do not ordinarily suffer. While presidential control of the political appointees in executive agencies is, of course, direct — career civil servants, on the other hand, enjoy insulation from removal by the president, who is the head of the executive branch — independent agency co-heads often are removable only for good cause.”
Herein lies the fallacy. Judge Rudofsky and his ilk claim it is not Constitutional to have appointed agency heads who cannot be removed, barring an act of God. Have you ever tried to have a federal judge removed? People have tried to have Judge Rudofsky removed, not from the bench, only from a single case. It is a daunting task.
Rudofsky not only interprets the legislature’s unambiguous language improperly, he reinvents the meaning of litigants’ rendition of the facts of the case. Then he dares the litigant, take it to appeal (which translates into the judge’s native New Yorkese as “so sue me”).
Adding insult to injury, judges invented the doctrine of Absolute Judicial Immunity, which makes it impossible to sue a judge in civil court for running all over your rights, no matter how malicious his motivations. (The executive branch enjoys the slightly lower protection of the doctrine of Qualified Immunity.)
The Rudofskys roll right over the legislature, then back up to run over litigants, then speed away spreading a bed of roofing nails behind them that are sure to disable law enforcement’s pursuit. This is the road they want our nation to be on.
I Can Stop Anytime. Really I Can.
Someone landed on a post I wrote in 2013. Out of curiosity, I read the post titled “Really, I Can Stop Any Time.”
What happened since then? Why am I writing here again?
There is so much corruption in our government. It comes from both sides. Look at Hunter Biden and William Asa Hutchinson the Third. Cocaine, gun charges, other infractions that would land the commoner’s son in jail, but Daddy is a mucky-muck, so the way-ward son not only walks, he gets to continue raking in big bucks with his law license.
My single vote does not count. There is not enough meaningful public disclosure to make an informed decision. I voted for Judge Susan Kaye Weaver in Arkansas and Donald Trump, who appointed Judge Lee P. Rudofsky to a lifetime federal position. (I voted Ben Carson in the 2016 primaries and would have been happy with Rand Paul, but the two candidates split their votes, so neither won.) Now that I’ve seen both judges working firsthand, I wish I could do a do over. (I don’t want to vote for Joe Biden, either, so I will probably “waste” my vote on the Libertarian presidential candidate or Cornel West if he runs as the “People’s Party” candidate in 2024.)
Hopefully my stories get picked up by the A.P., a big paper, or Fox News, like they did when I wrote about Alan Friedenthal (deceased) and Dr. Joseph Keenan.
I can’t imagine ending my blog now. I wrote my first book, “Balls of Crystal and Steel: What it Takes to Play Poker Without Losing Your Assets”. It was as easy as writing a blog post every day for three months. So, you can expect to see my blog spin-off a book or three about our courts.
In the meantime, I don’t plan on quitting, but am reposting the post I wrote when my ex-partner was on a downward spiral into the hell of addiction, and I had to run our business without him and win a lawsuit as a pro se litigant.
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My intention is to focus my energy and time on other pursuits.
But your comments were so kind, I am compelled to say a brief thank you.
Also, I received an inquiry about how to complain about an errant commissioner. I wrote a response and then realized it would be easy to add that response here. So here it goes:
One avenue is to file a complaint letter with the commissioner’s presiding judge. When your complaint is answered inadequately, file a complaint with the CJP.
You can also file a claim, as you found in the link [the link connects to a Japanese website now]. But judges have absolute immunity over issues where they have jurisdiction and the error was non-administrative. In practice, judges are given immunity for all wrongs they commit, the vast majority of the time.
My greatest success was trying them in the court of public opinion. Print the facts of your case. WordPress will give you a free website and is easy to use. Be careful to avoid saying anything defamatory. Stick to facts. Not opinions. Label suspicions as thus. Attribute statements. Cite cases or print transcripts. There is an absolute litigation privilege. Anything said in court [that is not sealed] can be reprinted with an indication of who said it and in what proceeding. For example, you would not write “Commissioner Friedenthal was biased and embroiled against me.” Instead you might write “Commissioner Friedenthal said on the record that he was reading my posts on CourthouseForum.” Then give a date of the hearing and the case number.
This is not legal advice. This is information I learned while studying journalism at Colorado State University.
Maybe the most important thing you can do is to meet other victims of court abuse. Choose your friends carefully. Ask to read their court documents. Use discernment.
It is uplifting when other people know you are speaking the truth. Jesus said “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:20) Thank you to my friends who gathered to do His will. God Bless.
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You can reach me at bohemian_books@yahoo.com.
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.
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.
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.
A Higher Law 