Palisades Put An INSANE Lien On My Personal Account

Holy crap! I am so sorry!! :shock:

I'm not that well versed in this area but I wanted to acknowledge your post. Please keep checking back as I am sure someone will be around with some advice.

You live in CA? Have you ever lived in NY? In order to place a lein on your account, they would first need a judgement. Have you pulled your credit reports yourself? www.annualcreditreport.com See if the judgement is showing in the public records section. That should tell you where the judgement was filed. If not, you will need to DV Palisades. If you can find out where the judgement was filed, you will need to obtain a copy of the case file. If it was filed in NY and you live in CA, then you would need to file a Motion to Vacate due to improper venue. If it was filed in CA, review the file and look for method of service. If service was improper, you will need to file a Motion to Vacate due to improper service.

What this sounds like is a case of mistaken identity. Do you have a "common name"? Go to www.howmanyofme.com and see. Let us know what you can glean from your reports. We'll help you to the best of our ability. PM me if you have any other questions. Godd Luck! We'll get you thru this.

Thanks for responding!

Yes, I have lived in NY for the past nine years, but I go to CA on occasion for extended periods of time. The address Palisades has for this false att account is a NY address I have never lived at though. I have a somewhat unusal name too. I am pretty sure it is not because I have a common name. Although when I called them a couple months ago it was from a California number, so maybe they think I live in CA?

I just tried to run the credit report and it says there is a freeze or a fraud alert on my info, so I have to write them.

What is a DV?

I got it to show up in a different report!

It says it is in NY.


It also says

Status:
Civil claim judgment.
Status Details:
This item is scheduled to continue on record until Jan 2014.




Date Filed:
01/2007

Date Resolved:
N/A
Claim Amount:
$6,647

Liability Amount:
N/A

I am not sure what this means though? Does this mean there was a hearing about this in 2007?

DV= debt validation

Have you ever been a victim of ID Theft? That would be the only reason I could see for there being a fraud alert on your reports. You might be able to call the CRA's and ask. Their numbers should be on their websites. Ask about the FA but you will likely have to mail them your proof of ID. Once you obtain the judgement info, follw the advice above.

It means the judgement was granted 1/07. Check and see if your county has a website and search for the case. If you can find it, I'd head down to the courthouse and get a copy of it ASAP. This to me is sounding like a case of ID theft.

Ok. Will do!

So, does this mean Palisades took me to court in January of 2007 (even though I didn't know about any of this then), and that the court passed a judgement saying I have to pay Palisades $6,647?

If the phone bill is from the year 2000 doesn't this go past the statute of limitations in NY anyways?

It might be ID theft. Doesn't Palisades just make stuff up sometimes though? I have read that they do.

Thanks again!

Phone bills should fall under the UCC SOL of 4 years and yes Palisades is shady enough to do something like that. My only worry is that there is normally a time limit to have a judgement vacated. In TX it is 1 year but if this is a case of IDT, there may not be a limit.

Would the timeframe to have it vacated still apply even if s/he didn't know anything about it?

That's waht I am unsure about. Here is a link to NYS Statutes

http://public.leginfo.state.ny.us/menugetf.cgi?COMMONQUERY=LAWS

Ok. Here's what I have.


Excuseable default is the most common reason for vacating a default judgment. It has two parts: (1) a reasonable excuse for missing the original court date; and (2) a meritorious defense (a good defense). There is a time limit for moving to vacate a judgment because of excuseable default -- one year from the date you were served with a copy of the judgment. (If you were never served with a copy of the judgment, your one-year clock has not started.)

Common examples of a reasonable excuse: The most common example of a reasonable excuse is that you did not receive a summons telling you to come to court. Other reasonable excuses are that at the time you received the summons you were out of town, ill, incarcerated, unable to take time off from work, or that you could not answer the summons for some other good reason. You would also have a reasonable excuse if, in response to the summons, you telephoned the attorneys for the plaintiff and they told you not to bother going to court.



So it says it is one year from the date you were served with a copy of the judgment, which I believe was in January of 2007. I have not known about any of this though and if papers on a trial or the judgement were sent to me I CERTAINLY DID NOT recieve them. Do I need to prove this? How do I prove it if I do? Are the court papers mailed with a return reciept? If so does it help if I never signed a receipt for them?

Obtain a copy of the case file. From your original post, the address they would likely have sent anything to was an address you have never lived at. You have grounds to vacate since you were never served. You should be able to verify tht from the method of service in the file. Keep us posted.

Thanks SO much for all of this help! I will find out more tomorrow and let you know what happens!

No problem. In the meantime, I would register with the forums so it will be easier to keep track of your posts. You are not obligated to sign up for the counseling and it makes it easier for the forum to keep track of your posts. Since the forum allows for "Guests" to post, sometimes it's hard to keep track of the OP's.

I would also move forward with taking steps to protect your identity. It's not 100% certain that you are a victim but from everything you've stated, it seems the most probable scenario. Here is the link to the FTC site. Any questions just ask:

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft/

hi and welcome to the forums

the first thing that hit me about your situation is that there is a HUGE difference between the $6000 they got a judgment for, and the $15000 that they put a levy on your bank account for. There is no way in the world that I can think of, that this would be legal. When they get a judgment, they cannot simply make up any old number they choose when taking action. They would only be allowed to take action against you for the exact amount of the judgment plus any interest as stated in the judgment. It's one hell of a stretch to go from $6K to $15K between 1/2007 and 10/2008. Thats one incredible interest rate! Something HAS to be wrong with that. Of course, they can also claim legal fees in the judgment, but again, since they didnt have to do anything but file a case and make motion for default judgment, the legal fees couldnt possibly have brought the balance this high.

The best place to look right now is the court clerk's office in the county where this suit was filed. You should be able to review the complete docket on this case. As for getting the judgment vacated, you have more than one sufficient reason.

--you were never served a summons
--the SOL is very much expired on this debt

When the judgment is vacated, this will remove any authority that palisades has to levy your bank accounts, etc etc etc. So, if you get that judgment thrown out, be sure to push the point that they need to remove the levy on your account immediately.

Something else--if this were happening to me, I would file my own suit against palisades. It seems to me that many things were done wrong on their end:

---failure to follow rules of civil procedure for your state by not serving the summons
---possibly placing a levy on your account for an amount not authorized by the court in this case

If we read what they put on your credit report--the one that the landlord showed you a couple months back--I bet we could find at least one FCRA violation there. It doesnt seem right that they supposedly sued you and won judgment in 1/2007, but just a couple of months ago they were still listing this as a collection account instead of a judgment. Anyways, more on that as this progresses, the first thing is to get this levy and the judgment thrown out. Check that county court clerk's office where this case was supposedly heard, and let us know what you find. Something else that you should consider preparing--put together a file of proof of the various addresses you have lived at over the last, say, ten years. If need be, you will have it to show to the court in your defense, this will bolster your claim that they are falsely declaring you as the debtor on this account.

Hi guys!

Thanks SO much again! I did sign in and become a member.
Today was a holiday, so I will not know more until tomorrow.
I did speak to ATT today though. They said that they know Palisades well and went on about how they are bottom feeders and that even if this actually was my account (which ATT has no record of) they CANNOT collect lots of interest over time on anything anyway bc they are not interest bearing accounts. The original "bill" was only for a few hundred dollars if I remember correctly. So they can only charge a one time additional 18% interest fee added to the few hundred dollars. Palisades told me it had collected interest since the year 2000 that added up to over 6K when I spoke to them, and it appears that the judgement against me was for 6K on my credit report. So this appears to be COMPLETELY ILLEGAL. I have NO IDEA how they turned it into a 15K lien, but obviously this was most lilkely COMPLETELY illegal as well.

I will let let you know what happens tomorrow.

I talk to the courts. The case was filed in Jan of of 06 and the court hearing was in Jan 07. What is the statute in NY for claims like this?

Were you served properly? Were you notified of the court case? If not, you may have the judgement overturned for improper service.

No. I NEVER recieved anything. I am trying to gather all of the info possible though. I looked up statutes in NY and it says there is six years. Which means it unfortunately IS within the statute time limit if the phoney bill is from the year 2000 and they filed the case in January 2006. Can anyone help here? Is the statute 6 years?

This is what Nascardevil said on the previous page about the SOL:

All the research I have done says it is 6 years. Can someone help confirm if it is 4 or 6 years?

Sorry...don't have my bookmarks handy. I'll confirm when I get on my computer in the morning but I beleive NY has adopted the UCC SOL into statute. Research UCC and Utilities in NY. All electric, water, gas, and phone are covered under the Uniform Commercial Code.

Talk to the bank in California and find out how the lien was placed on the account. I don't think a New York court has authority over a business in another state without a local court certifying it.

Here are a couple links to the UCC:

http://public.leginfo.state.ny.us/menugetf.cgi?COMMONQUERY=LAWS

http://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/ucc.table.html

Hi guys!

Thanks!
I am getting a dead link on that first link.

Try this one:

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/nycodes/index.html

Hi guys,

I just want to give you an update on the situation bc I REALLY appreciate your help. It will be a little while befoe I cna give an update tough bc I have to fly to NY to go to the courts to find out exactly what happened here. I will let you know more as soon as I know more.

Thank you very much again!