Portfolio Recovery Associates Continues to Torment Consumer Years After Closing the Account
I filed a lawsuit, pro se, against Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC. The Big Business Billionaire debt collection company set the balance on the account to zero and closed the account, they say, “in light of the ongoing litigation.” Then they threw me a bone, an inadequate settlement offer, and expected me to run off with it.
That was almost four years ago. The case is at the United States Supreme Court on petition for writ of certiorari. (Sup. Ct. No. 24-6113)
It was not enough for PRA to win at the lower courts due to a Pro Big Business Billionaire – Anti-individual judge named Lee P. Rudofsky. The lawyers from Rose Law Firm and Troutman Pepper who represent the PRA Group, Inc. subsidiary came up with a ruse.
There may be a clerk at the Supreme Court of the United States involved. (I informed the clerk of this mistake weeks ago and it has not been corrected.) I filed a motion to file some documents that were sealed by Rudofsky and the Eighth Circuit initially sealed and then immediately unsealed at the Supreme Court. the motion was “Granted”. But it was docketed as filed two weeks before it was filed, when the petition was filed. And the documents were filed under seal the day after the motion was granted and not unsealed.
When I saw “Motion Granted” I posted the documents on this blog. The next day, after talking to a staff member at SCOTUS, I deleted the link from the blog page. But people who received the email copy of the post still had the link and the link still worked.
I’ve heard that just deleting something doesn’t ever really remove it from the internet. It was a mystery and I let PRA know that I didn’t know the magic trick that would make those emailed links quit working.
PRA filed an “emergency” motion on December 20th, 11 days after my post was emailed to them, and asked the court to take down this entire blog “until such time as PRA can be assured its confidential documents are no longer publicly accessible” along with about a year’s worth of my total income.
I worked through Christmas week researching and writing a response to try to save my blog from disappearing. Judge Rudofsky told me in a written docket entry order that he would not give me past December 27th.
Judge Rudofsky gave PRA’s team of attorneys 10 days to reply to my response.
The email you can download below was entered in the reply as an exhibit. It is from WordPress’ parent company and was sent on December 21st. It says, in part, “If the documents are still available, the fastest way to remove them would be for Ms. Hammett to contact wordpress support and they can assist her.”
Wow! PRA must have been really concerned about the confidentiality of the documents. NOT! They probably knew the four clicks I would need to make to break the links to the documents. They definitely knew who I could speak with to find out how it can be done. They knew that taking down my blog was like dropping a nuclear bomb to kill a gnat.
I’m going to file another complaint against PRA and its attorneys for intentional infliction of emotional distress. If the court orders my blog to be “taken down” then I will ask for $1,000,000 per year for all the years I was actively writing. That is about the same as PRA’s risk manager’s base salary.
I would have preferred to spend Christmas as planned, cherishing peaceful moments with my granddaughter and my husband, who is battling stage IV cancer. However, a 6- or 7-million-dollar jury verdict should make PRA think twice before retaliating against a victim of its abusive practices—someone brave enough to challenge a company that files 3,000 lawsuits a week against everyday people.
Another Stupid Attorney (and Corrupt Judge) Trick to Play on Pro Se Litigants
Pro se litigants, people who can’t afford attorney representation and file their case on their own, often get the sneaky suspicion that the court is teaming up with the opposing parties’ attorneys.
Are there brief cases full of cash exchanging hands? I haven’t seen any with my own eyes.
Are there lavish gifts or invites to shin-digs being given to the judges? Think Justice Clarence Thomas.
Is there a natural tendency to favor someone who belongs to the same club? Absolutely!
The document above is from a case that had judges and clerks allegedly colluding with six law firms and the defendants that included two more law firms against me.
But, you know me. As much as they cheated, I responded with logic, facts and law. My appellate brief was jam packed with valid reasons to overturn the vast majority of district court orders. If the Ninth Circuit refused justice, this was going to the Supremes.
Five years into the proceedings, the Ninth Circuit pointed out a Supreme Court case from 1990, authored by Justice Scalia and followed in every circuit, that says the federal courts did not have jurisdiction over my case. The proceedings are void. The orders must be vacated. It is a do-over.
This is very good for me! I basically won on appeal and get to start over in state court.
But what if I won the case against all odds? The defendants would all of a sudden remember the rule that destroyed jurisdiction and I would still need to start over.
The rule: One situation that allows federal court jurisdiction is when each plaintiff is a citizen of a different state than each defendant. The tricky part is that an LLC, partnership or other unincorporated association is a citizen of each state of which each member is a citizen. I sued a limited liability company organized in California with all its business in California, and said it was a citizen of California. I am a citizen of Arkansas. Looked to me like we had diversity. But no! The LLC was also a citizen of Arkansas.
I am thrilled that all merit-based orders in the case must be vacated. (The federal courts can still police the participants for bad behavior, like direct contempt.) I would be more thrilled if the court did not waste five years of a bunch of people’s energy and other resources playing stupid games.
The judges on my case were well aware of the caselaw that told them they lacked jurisdiction. I found a few relevant cases they presided over on Westlaw.
The Attorney Defendants argued that I should still have to pay the bullshit attorney fee order the corrupt judges made and upheld, based on an anti-SLAPP motion. Here is an outtake of an order written by Judge Todd W. Robinson, one of the judge gang.
“Although the California Supreme Court has recently advised that a court may award attorneys’ fees and costs to the defendant pursuant to Section 425.16 where the court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction, it did not hold that an award of fees is mandatory. See Barry v. State Bar of Cal., 2 Cal. 5th 318, 320–21, 329, 212 Cal.Rptr.3d 124, 386 P.3d 788 (2017). Consequently, federal courts have denied—and continue to deny after Barry—as moot anti-SLAPP motions when the court has dismissed the underlying action on jurisdictional grounds. See, e.g., Newport Inv. Grp., LLC v. Cliett, No. SACV 18-01597-JVS(DFMx), 2019 WL 2424109, at *1 (C.D. Cal. June 10, 2019) (declining to reach anti-SLAPP motion after concluding that dismissal was warranted for lack of personal jurisdiction under Rule 12(b)(2)); Williby v. Hearst Corp., No. 5:15-cv-02538-EJD, 2017 WL 1210036, at *1, *7 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 31, 2017) ( ); Sikhs for Justice, Inf. v. Facebook, Inc., 144 F. Supp. 3d 1088, 1097 (2015) (denying as moot anti-SLAPP motion after declining to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over remaining state law claims); Fortinos v. Sills, No. C 12-3828 MEJ, 2012 WL 5870681, at 5 & n.9 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 19, 2012) (same); Ravet v. Solomon, Ward, Seidenwurm & Smith, LLP, No. 07 CV 0031 JM, 2007 WL 2088381, at *7 S.D. Cal. July 17, 2007 (same).” Williams v. Kula, Case No.: 20-CV-1120, ECF No. 76, TWR (AHG)(Signed 12/29/2020)
“Despite having a meritorious personal jurisdiction defense, Defendants filed duplicative—and voluminous—anti-SLAPP motions. Having prevailed on their Rule 12(b)(2) motions, Defendants’ anti-SLAPP motions have ‘not achieve[d] any practical benefit’ aside from burdening the Court (and Plaintiffs) and menacing Plaintiffs with the specter of attorneys’ fees.” (Williams)
Judge Robinson ignored the jurisdictional issue on my case and upheld the bad order on the anti-SLAPP. The order was wrong for other reasons than the lack of jurisdiction. The difference between the two cases?
Guess first. Ok?
The defendants that Robinson chewed out were pro se. The defendants on my case were attorneys represented by attorneys. Robinson said those defendants were spot on. The plaintiffs that Robinson favored were represented by attorneys. I was a pro se plaintiff and the judge showed no concern whatsoever for the unethical legal strategies used against me, even though more egregious than in the Williams case.
A Higher Law 