Maryland residents have become increasingly alarmed at the
number and frequency of debt buyer "junk" lawsuits being brought in
our state courts. District courts all accross Maryland are inundated with an
almost incomprehensible number of these lawsuits which are literalily clogging
up their dockets and taking up valuable judicial time and resources. The Maryland
judiciary has already attempted to address this problem by issuing rules
earlier this year that make it harder for junk debt buyers to prevail in such
suits and yet district courts still labor under a huge number of these cases.
How is this still possible? The fact of the matter is that
junk debt buyers know that in the vast majority of these cases, the consumer
will simply not show up to defend against the suit. Thus with relatively little
effort, junk debt buyers can use the judicial system as their own personal
collection agency and haul in huge amounts in judgements, unopposed. The
tragedy of this situation is that in many of those cases, the consumer has
powerful defenses against the law suit and may indeed have causes of action
against the debt buyer that could result in an award of monetary damages and
attorneys fees!
One can only hope that with increased awareness, Maryland
consumers will eventually come to understand that they do have rights and that
in many cases there are excellent consumer attorneys out there that will take
on consumer cases for low fees or on a contingency basis.
For an excellent read on the extent of the junk debt buyer
problem see Professor Peter Holland's article titled: "The One Hundred
Billion Dollar Problem in Small Claims Court: Robo Signing and Lack of Proof in
Debt Buyer Cases" available online here .
If you would like to speak to a Maryland Consumer Attorney please visit www.mdconsumerlawyer.net.
