In granting summary judgment to Kohn and Unifund, the Court noted that in order for Burton to be entitled to relief under the FDCPA, he must establish that: (1) Kohn and Unifund are debt collectors (2) they sought to collect a “debt” as defined by the FDCPA and (3) the collection attempt violated the FDCPA. The initial state court action by Kohn was dismissed without prejudice and, subsequently, Burton filed the FDCPA/WCA suit against Kohn (later adding Unifund as a co-defendant) in the Eastern District of Wisconsin. In his answer and counterclaim, consumer John Burton stated he had no knowledge of the credit agreement and denied that he had ever applied for the account with Citibank. The case arises from a state court action filed by Kohn Law Firm on behalf of Unifund CCR, LLC, for breach of contract stemming from an unpaid credit card with Citibank, NA. A copy of the Court’s opinion can be found here.
Send us your documents for a free review today.On April 13, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin granted summary judgment to defendants in a lawsuit brought under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”) and the Wisconsin Consumer Act (“WCA”). Meanwhile, if Unifund recovers only a fraction of the Citibank debt from you, they will make a large profit because they purchased the account for much less than you owe.ĭon’t let these collectors run circles around you. Therefore, it will be difficult for the credit originator to attempt to reclaim the account if the alleged collection sale to Unifund were exposed as a nullity. If the seller bank has since merged with other entities, its corporate “book value” was calculated without inclusion of your account. The answer may be that no legal entity can successfully claim to be the creditor on the account. If no valid Unifund assignment ever existed, who owns the account? Often times, the creditor’s assignment of debt paperwork is not properly prepared, and even robo-signed by high volume processing employees. Often times the collection agency has to pay the legal fees you incur resulting from their violation(s).ĭiscovery demands such as a Demand for Document Production can reveal whether or not the debt buyer and collector are in possession of admissible evidence documenting their acquisition of the Citibank debt account. You can file a counterclaim against Unifund CCR if they run afoul of the law. Our debt relief law firm concentrates our practice in responding to this type of paperwork. The law firm frequently representing Unifund, Mullooly Jeffrey Rooney & Flynn LLP is persistent in processing of accounts receivable claims.īy not responding to legal notices sent to you in the mail, you may be giving up valuable consumer protections. We have seen evidence of multiple Unifund CCR collection lawsuits all filed to collect one single Citibank arrearage.
A lot of debt buyer claims are unenforceable, and there is nothing the creditor can do to force you to pay.
We encourage you to fax or email us a copy of any debt collection letters and let us review the validity of the claims. They invest money to acquire defaulted Citibank debt accounts, and then work as a collection agency to recover the funds from consumers.