collection letter says a judgement was ordered -

Munchkin, Welcome to the fourm. Someone should be along soon that can shed some light on your situation. In the meantime, you can use the search box in the top right corner of the page becuase there have been several members who have dealt with this company.

I would call the attorney's office and request production of the entire pleadings/motions/orders file that they would happen to have on you. In addition, I would also let them know that you will be verifying this with the court of jurisdiction.

If it is true and the state is New York, I won't offer advice, but will tell you what I would do in a situation like this if a client ever came to me in a situation like this.

which state is this?

Correction - I was looking at mortgage judgements online in my county.

How can I verify if a small claims judgement was awarded against me?

I agree with hockeyman. It all sounds suspect to me. If you find that it is all bogus, sue them.

I live in McHenry Country, IL

Munchkin...Check your county court house records...and like everyone above stated if it's a scare tactic...take them to court!

Can't access county court house civil judgement records on-line, so I just paid to see my current credit report today - it shows no judgement awarded to them.

Settlement letter is dated 11-6-07.....is it possible that the judgement has not yet been reported to credit agencies?

If this is a scare tactict then they obviously have crossed the line here - haven't they? Wouldn't they be in violation of FDCP? If so, is it easy to sue without an attorney?

It is against the law for them to misrepresent the debt or make claims that are not true; so if they are lying about their judgment then you do have a case against them. I have a hunch, though, that they filed in a different county.

Granted, they should be suing you in your own county. However, I see that Midland files a LOT of cases in Cook County. Maybe they filed in Cook County and got a default judgment??? That is what I suspect.

Did they put a case number on their letter? Cook county case #'s look like YYYY-M?-XXXXXX, where YYYY is the year they filed, M? is the district they filed in (M1=1st Municipal District/downtown), and XXXXXX is the case #.

Try going to cook county clerk's website @ @@http://198.173.15.34@@ . You can do a docket search by case # or name. See if you pop up at all. If you do, somehow you'll need to argue improper service and/or improper venue.

I tried Cook county and found no judgements.

I also think maybe they filed in the wrong county. Then again MCM has two accounts of mine (2 old credit cards: providian & household bank) and I am currently fighting them in court on the providian account - for this one I was properly served a summons in my county. How could they get the county right on one account & not the other?

I will have to check with Kane county as well because I'm on the border of Kane. Neither Kane or McHenry county has access to this info on the internet - can I do this over the phone or do I need to make a trip to each courthouse?

I breathed a sigh of relief that nothing is on my credit report - but is this a false sense of security? How soon does a civil judgement appear on your credit report? For this account in question all it says on my credit report is "placed for collections".

Quote:

Even if they did get a default judgment all you need to do is talk to the judge who heard the case and get the judgment vacated due to improper service.

Demand that the collector send you a copy of the "judgment".

Today I came accross an old piece of mail from this CA dated May 2007 that says the same exact thing - that a judgement was awarded to them.

If they had won a judgement sometime before May 2007 it would be on my credit report - correct? As of yesterday my credit report shows no such judgement. Is it safe to assume this is a scare tactic now?

btw - these letters simply state "The court has found you liable..." but does not mention which court, which county, any docket case number or award date. It goes on to say that when I pay "our client's attorney will file a satisfaction of judgement as well as a release of lien." What does this mean - what do they have a lien against? I thought a lien was placed against something of value - I guess I don't understand.

Who reports a judgement to the credit bureaus and how soon?

Munchkin, only some IL counties offer online searches. This is the link for that judici.com/courts/court_list.jsp .

Otherwise, go to the McHenry Co courthouse and they should have a public access computer to search public records.

hiya--

first, it is a possibility that the second account they have with you was filed in a different county on purpose. Some of these CA's use tactics to try to snap up a quick judgment, and they already know you will fight them because of the first case.

Second, be careful not to assume anything about this situation. It is not definitive proof of anything that there is no judgment showing on your credit file. The only way to prove this is to go to the clerk's office and make sure that there is no judgment against you. Also, they should be able to tell you if there was even a complaint filed against you--this would be considered an ongoing case at that point. This is the important part--you must make sure because you cannot count on the CA to tell you the truth. If you still find no judgment on record, you can then contact the CA directly and demand proof of their claims. Inform them that falsely stating such a thing in order to scare you into paying is very illegal according to the fdcpa.

I verified with McHenry & cook county that no judgment is in place against me. As I said, credit report shows no judgment either.

Last week I sent certified letters to the CA (First Nat'l) & the junk debt buyer (MCM) requesting proof of the judgment & the debt.

Today I call First Nat'l - they got my cert. letter & closed the case & sent it back to MCM - I have to call MCM now. When I say I never got served a summons First Nat'l says if they can't serve me at home they put a notice in the paper & if I didn't see it too bad for me - the judgment sticks.

I call MCM - all they can tell me is that a judgement was ordered 03-05 and I need to contact the law firm who handled it - I have the law firm number, but office is closed - will call tomorrow. According to my credit report 03-05 is the month & year that MCM bought the debt, so I think customer service rep was just reading off any dates she could find - I highly doubt that within 1 month of buying the debt they were able to secure a judgment. Also, MCM collection letters I have mention nothing of a judgment award - only the letter from First Nat'l does.

I find it hard to believe that if a judgment was ordered in 2005 that no action like wage garnashment was taken to collect - or that they would let it go this long & not put it on my credit report.

I have to ask again - if someone wins a judgement by default doesn't the court send the judgment papers to the person in default by mail to notify them?

And, is it true that a newspaper announcement suffices as notice? I would think a certified letter in the mail would be more appropriate & affective when you have no luck serving papers to someone.

Any new thoughts on this?

hi again....

ok, first, it is legal in some places for them to put notice in a public newspaper. However, it is not something they can simply do and be done with it. Usually, notice in a newspaper is only allowed after a bona fide attempt of personal service has been tried, and they were unable to locate you. As far as I recall, most places will require them to make a good effort at personally serving you before that would be allowed. It is different from state to state. The law you are looking for is called the "rules of civil procedure". Here is this law for Illinois....



There is one exception to this rule, and here it is:



The highlighted text is the key. In simple terms, they are required to serve you personally, or they can leave the summons with someone else in your household. However, if they leave it with someone else, they are also required by this law to send you a copy in the mail at your last known address. So, either way, if you were living in the same address all this time that they already had, then you clearly were not served properly. Now, the highlighted text means this--they can ask the court to allow use of other methods, such as placing it in the newspaper, but in order to do so they must document to the court exactly what efforts they made to locate you first, and the court must agree that the efforts they made were sufficient.

The person you spoke with on the phone lied when she said "all we have to do is put it in the paper". The law requires them to do a lot more than that, and I would think that no court would permit this to continue to trial if thats all they did, because they must provide to the court evidence of the effort to have you served before proceedings can continue.

Now, as far as the court notifying you, that is something I am not aware of personally. I do know this--if you checked with the court, they would not tell you there was no judgment if there really was one. So, at this point, the CA just lied to you about how they "served you"...and the court shows no such complaint even being filed against you in their jurisdiction. I would consider the letter and claims made by the CA that you have a judgment against you as illegal harassment, designed to scare you into paying them money. I would suggest that you take this to the next level. First, I would document all of this. Send them a certified letter, explaining that you are aware of their dishonest and illegal attempt to scare you into paying them money. Include a copy of their letter to you. Then, inform them that the court in your jurisdiction has no record of judgment against you in this matter. This is a violation of the fdcpa, big time. They cannot make any false claims whatsoever in the process of attempting to collect a debt. I would even consider recording the phone calls from now on--especially if you can get that lady to talk again about how they supposedly served you in the newspaper. The only problem there is that you are required to get the consent of all parties in your state to legally record the call, so at the beginning of the call, you should state that this call may be recorded and by continuing with the call they are giving their permission for the recording to take place. That way, you will have it on record that they were informed and chose to continue with the conversation. This will leave them no way to weasel out of this. Or, they will simply hang up, in which case you wont have to listen to any more of this crap on the phone.

The only question is how far you want to pursue this? They are definitely in violation of the federal law, and FDCPA violations carry a penalty of up to $1000, which they would have to pay you. You certainly have enough info to proceed, I think. You did right by demanding a copy of this judgment. At this point, there is only one other possibility I can think of--if they actually did get a judgment, they had to have gotten it in a jurisdiction other than where you live. Because of that, if they did this, you can petition that court to vacate the judgment due to improper venue. This simply means they tried to proceed against you in a place where you do not live, and where it is highly likely that you would not have had any opportunity to learn of the complaint, so you could not possibly answer it. Either way, you are actually not in a bad position with this right now.

Sorry to make this so long, hope it helps. If you need any other info, feel free to ask away

Jon

Here's the latest:

I just spoke with Blatt Hasenmiller - Midland's attorney. After searching through his records the rep there says there is no judgment and that First National has reported that they erroneously stated there was a judgment. He did't say when they reported the error...but I suspect they did this upon receipt of my cert letter demanding proof as the last letter I have from them is dated 11-7-07.

My gut feeling is that this was a scare tactic - not an error - and I understand I could sue them for violation of the FDCA, but how do I do that? Can I handle myself? Or should I get a lawyer to handle? Is it worth handling?

Thoughts? Advice?

The help here is extremely helpful & greatly appreciated.

Check what sort of cases are heard in small claims court in your state. I't relatively easy to file a complaint there, and not expensive. Unless you have evidence of more than the one violation, it might be difficult to find an attorney, or if you did find one, there might not be much money in it for you.