Courts that Tax the Poor and Middleclass
You have a dispute with a corporation like ZIPS Car Wash, First American Home Warranty or Portfolio Recovery Group.
The company took money from you that you did not owe, did not provide the service you paid for or tried to extort money from you.
You tried writing “letters”, poor reviews on the internet, and begged by telephone for the company to correct itself. All to no avail.
So, you decide to take them to court.
In my experience, the courts often discourage non-attorneys from filing a suit.
In the small claims division in Faulkner County Arkansas, I filed a suit against Goodman Manufacturing for selling a faulty HVAC to me. The court charged me $12.55 on top of the filing fee, supposedly to serve the suit on Goodman by certified mail.
Eventually, Goodman wrote a motion to dismiss based on improper service and showed a copy of the service envelope with a regular stamp on it. The court is collecting over $10 extra per plaintiff, and if the plaintiff has a good case that concerns a company that has lawyered up, the case can be thrown out on a technicality. (One of the other defendants settled with me, so I know it was a good case.) See the FREE Doc of the Day at the end of the post.
In a case in the Federal District Court of Southern California, five of the defendants were attorneys who were accused of committing malpractice on a company that I was a shareholder in. There were other harms against me claimed in the same lawsuit. The malpractice claim is what is called “derivative”. A derivative suit cannot be filed by a non-attorney. Who knew?
The court allowed me to proceed on the derivative suit and denied me leave to hire an attorney to explain what a derivative suit was unless I hired the attorney to represent me in the entire case. That might have cost more than I would recover. There was no fee shifting provision that would allow me to recover the costs of the lawsuit.
When I discovered on my own that by proceeding on the derivative suit I might be charged with practicing law without a license, I brought it to the Court’s attention as a voluntary dismissal. Judge Sammartino decided that I dismissed because the attorneys were going to prevail and ordered me to pay their attorney fees on an anti-SLAPP motion. Never mind that malpractice and conversion claims are not subject to the fee shifting anti-SLAPP statute.
In the Federal Court in the Eastern District of Arkansas, there are conflicting rules about non-attorneys using electronic filing. One says non-attorneys cannot use electronic filing. Period. That is the rule Judge Lee P. Rudofsky enforced against me. There is another rule that says a person can gain permission to use electronic filing by filing a motion. I tried that, to no avail.
“Conventional” paper filing taxes the pro se litigant. Instead of filing whenever convenient, the non-attorney must drive to the courthouse during business hours or mail the documents and cross her fingers.
I went into an important hearing on the case once and learned that my adversary’s attorneys received an order by electronic service the day before that I did not get in the mail yet. They had an opportunity to research the law before we discussed it, and I did not.
Each of the approximately 100 documents I filed in the case cost me about $100 extra to copy four times and using the GSA mileage expense to drive to the courthouse and home. That is $10,000 I could not spend on discovery, like depositions and subpoenas. I have an autoimmune disease and was forced to go into public to file. (Once I went to the courthouse on the last day to file. I was feeling a little more lousy than usual, so I went to an urgent care after and found out I had COVID. If I had electronic filing, I would not have exposed others to the disease.)
What can be done about this taxation of the poor and middleclass that can’t afford to pay an attorney hundreds of dollars an hour for representation?
It will probably take a Constitutional challenge to the laws that discriminate against the majority class. Where judges like Janis L. Sammartino, Lee P. Rudofsky or the Clerk of the Court are misapplying the law or ignoring the law, it means filing an appeal and prevailing.
Good luck.
If you have a story about systemic bias in the courts, please shoot an email to bohemian_books@yahoo.com.
Doc 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.
A Conversation with Federal District Judge Lee P. Rudofsky
*WARNING! WARNING! This is parody.
The judge’s actual words are in black. I moved whole sentences around a bit. Maybe I should practice law; I already truncate sentences and splice phrases from different paragraphs together. I did change third person to second person “you” statements without using [brackets]. Where I am surmising what Judge Rudofsky is thinking, the text is blue. The way I wish I could write in my appellate brief is in red.
Judge Rudofsky:
Pending before the Court is Defendant PRA’s Motion for Taxable Costs. Pursuant to Rule 54(d)(1) and 28 U.S.C. § 1920, PRA requests $8356.18 in costs. You make numerous arguments as to why the Court should not impose the requested costs. Your arguments are not persuasive. No arguments or reasoning can influence me, because I have a solemn pact to protect the interests of Walmart, and PRA buys billions of dollars of worthless debts from GE Capital Walmart. We gotta get PRA paid. Accordingly, the Court GRANTS PRA’s Motion.
Laura Lynn:
But you are not following the law and you are falsifying the record.
Judge Rudofsky:
I do want to tell you that I am not one of those judges who gets concerned or worried or upset about appeals. I get paid the same whether I get it right or get it wrong. In fact, the cabal gives me extra points if I keep the masses in their place. I’m on the fast track to a position as Grand Poobah.
Laura Lynn:
But, your honor, I am a 61-year-old with severe Hashimoto’s Disease and stress related insomnia. It is difficult for me to take a job, because I never know if I will have the energy to leave the house. I am trying to make money writing, but that is difficult. That is why I didn’t use my bachelor’s degree in journalism right after graduation and worked in real estate instead. I lost all my relatively liquid assets in the COVID-Crash and live on a $639 per month pension.
Judge Rudofsky:
Liar! Elsewhere you state that your monthly income is $630.
Laura Lynn:
I’m sorry. It’s not that I was too tired to look up my deposit receipts or my pinky finger slipped when I reached for the 9. I was trying to keep one extra vegetarian salad at Chipotle each month without reporting it.
Judge Rudofsky:
Plebeian. You also cite to 15 U.S.C. § 1692(k). § 1692 does not have a subsection (k). You mean § 1692k.
Laura Lynn:
I beg your forgiveness. My sister Mary Sherman is right. I am a “moron”.
It seems a little Draconian though, to make me pay more than a year’s pension for the debt buyer’s costs, when I could not afford to pay for the depositions that you said would help my case.
Judge Rudofsky:
You have not shown that you are currently so destitute that awarding taxable costs would be inequitable. You do not note what your expenses are.
I do not believe that you can’t get by on $639 per hour and still pay PRA’s costs. Attorneys like James Trefil get paid half that and pay their bills. Well, maybe not James Trefil, but you understand my point.
Laura Lynn:
But Your Honor, I said $639 per month.
Judge Rudofsky:
That does not create — a more favorable situation for you were this to go to a jury than you had before. In fact, if it does anything, it hurts you, but I just don’t think it makes any difference one way or the — or the other. Notwithstanding your status of a poverty level income, you appear to concede that you have assets of at least $70,000 in a capital account.
Laura Lynn:
Your Honor, (exasperated), that money is being held by my sisters who refuse to dissolve a family-owned limited liability company that has no purpose to exist, other than to hold my capital. That is what one of my 12 lawsuits over a lifetime is about. That Court, Judge Linda Lopez, said that my sisters are using reasonable business judgment to decide that my capital is assets of the company and dissolution is not required as long as the company holds assets.
It is on appeal.
Judge Rudofsky:
Oh, that is wonderful. I’m sure Linda appreciates you appealing. I think it’s a great part of our system and, quite frankly, it makes me feel better that there are other judges looking over my shoulder who can tell me if they think I got it right.
Laura Lynn:
What if they think you got it wrong?
***************************
Please consider helping me defray the costs of appealing this order. I am considering framing a question to SCOTUS: When a federal district judge, who cannot be fired according to the will of the people, dismantles the FDCPA, is he making an unconstitutional power grab?
You can CashApp a donation to $CoolOldStuff. Or contact me at bohemian_books@yahoo.com. Especially if you can contribute free legal representation or know an organization that pays filing fees for people who can’t qualify as in forma pauperis. Thank you. (This is a gift to an individual, not a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.)
Satan and Federal Court Judge Lee P. Rudofsky
No, I am not saying Judge Lee P. Rudofsky is Satan or the Anti-Christ.
I am just saying that we can learn a lesson by comparing the two.
Judge Rudofsky has now granted Portfolio Recovery Associates motion for me to pay their costs of defending against a lawsuit arising from incessant phone calls PRA made in an attempt to collect money I did not owe to them.
Along the way, Judge Rudofsky twisted words, lied, deceived and may have orchestrated the falsification of a transcript. I will detail my claims in my appeal and in other posts on this blog. Here is the big picture.
Judge Rudofsky is incredibly intelligent.
He studied at Cornell. He studied at Harvard. He lived in Israel for a year, and I presume he speaks Hebrew well. He writes in English with a silver “tongue”.
But intellect is not an indication of integrity. And Judge Rudofsky lacks integrity.
He lies. He deceives. He has no compassion nor empathy for the ordinary person.
He is a dangerous man.
(Being dangerous can be taken as a compliment of sorts. Sometimes I call my husband “cute”. Then I playfully correct myself. “I mean you look sexy and dangerous.” Judge Rudofsky should not take my comment about him as a compliment.)
Here are a few verses about Satan taken from the King James Version that remind me of Judge Lee Rudofsky.
Genesis 3:1
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.
2 Corinthians 11:14-15
And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.
1 Peter 5:8
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:
2 Corinthians 11:3
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty… [which refers to Genesis 3:4-5) And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
And Eve fell for it. Be on your guard. When you read orders written by Judge Rudofsky, know that he is tweeking the truth, whether through subtle deception or outright lies. If your case is disambiguated from the plaintiff who failed in front of Judge Rudofsky, the Judge may fictionalize the evidence to fall under the precedent that fulfils his agenda.
His agenda is to please those who control the most money, in exchange for prestige, power and possessions.
2 Timothy 3:13
But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.
Matthew 7:15-17
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
Judge Rudofsky’s fruit is evil. He presided on a case filed by a self-represented, low-income, sickly woman against a billion-dollar debt buyer. He admittedly misquoted the plaintiff to say she agreed she owed a debt, ignoring the score of clear and concise statements that the woman did not owe the debt. He refused to let a jury decide.
The woman told the judge that all her assets other than those that are protected in bankruptcy were lost or taken from her since COVID-19. She showed that her efforts to re-enter the workforce by reviving her writing career resulted in a loss, at least in 2022. She said that she went to other courts to try to recover some of those assets but lost at the trial court and is on appeal. (Only 20% of appeals are successful and the number by self-represented litigants approaches zero.)
Judge Rudofsky ordered the woman, me, to pay over a year’s pension in costs anyhow. This is not a direct quote, but to paraphrase, he said “let her eat cake.”
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.
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.
A Higher Law 