judgment when statue was up?

[needadvicequick]

What is the name of your state? Washington state
A year ago a creditor served us with a lawsuit for a credit card debt. Incuded in the paperwork they also copied all the personal
info of 2 other peole thry sent us names,yearly income, address,
social security numbers. i wrote them and told them if they pursued collection I would report them. WE did not hear from them again untill this week when we get a writ of garnishment.
They got a judgment without ever sending us the motion for defualt. They filed it 1 day before the judge signed the papers but never sent it to us. We also believe that the statute for collecting this debt may have past the last payment was 4/99 and I understand the statue to be 3 years in washington is that correct? What can I do at this point?

 

[stephenk]

When was the judgment entered against you? Why did you ignore the Complaint and not file a response after you were served?

Depending on when the judgment was entered, you may not have any options to set aside the judgment. The time to argue that the debt was too old to collect was after you were served by filing an answer to the complaint. Ignoring the Complaint only resulted in bigger problems, as you are unfortunately finding out.

 

[needadvicequick]

I disputed it in writting a year ago when we were served. i also notifyed them they broke the law. They never contacted us again.
We did nt get the motion for default that they filed with the court 1 days before they got the judgment 3 months ago but we just found out. We got a copy from the vcourt house and it doesnt say where it was mailed.
Is the statute 3 years ? washington

 

[needadvicequick]

Also a year ago when we got served the papers we disputed it immedialty and were never given a court date at all. We never heard a word from them after we said they broke the law and reported them to the FCC.
They should have been required to notify us of the motion for defaukt shouldnt they? it is interesting they filed it with the court but did not send it to us . Did we have the right to be notifyed?

 

[bigun]

Disputing a debt and answering a summons are 2 different things. If you didn't generally deny the allegations in your response to the court, the likely made a motion for a summary judgment and it was granted.
It seems like you're skipping over a lot of details. How exactly did you answer the summons that needed to be returned to the court?

 

[needadvicequick]

well , I am not sure that we got anything that told us to respond to the court. It was served us and listed the amount of the debt etc and said we had so amny days to respond but it did not list a court date or anything. I responded in a letter to both the court and the other lawyer and never heard from them again for a year.
Can they continue to collect if they broke the fair debt collection pratices?

 

[Ladynred]

The problem here is, as Bigun mentioned, HOW you answered the Complaint. You say you wrote a letter, (not the right format but maybe acceptable) WHAT did you say in the letter ? If you did not answer each of the questions by either 'agreeing' or 'denying' the charges, then, as Bigun stated, they filed a motion for summary judgment and got it. Your Answer, likely, didn't provide enough of what was needed to support your arguments and the suing attorney got what he wanted.

IF the only letter you sent in response to the Complaint was stating that they broke the law by including other people's info, that was NOT and answer and they won by default.

I don't see that you have any grounds to even appeal the judgment unless you can provide some more details.

 

[needadvicequick]

at the same time I sent certified letters to the court and to the agentcy I also filed a complaint agaisnt them with the FTC due to
the violations. I imagine that is what stopped them for a year but it resurfaced some how.

 

[Ladynred]

Ok. So you separated the two, but what exactly did you say in your Answer to the Complaint ?? This is what is important where the judgment is concerned, not any FDCPA violations. If you answered that they were violating the FDCPA, it was NOT the correct way to answer a lawsuit.. and they won. The year-long lapse likely has nothing whatsoever to do with any FDCPA violations, the judgment creditor wasn't being aggressive in enforcing collection until recently.

 

[bigun]

OK, I'd suggest you retain a lawyer. They did break the law if they did not stay the lawsuit until they provided validation. The case is Sprouse vs City Credits.

http://www.licatalaw.com/articles/article_collection.htm