Skewed Courts Team Up with Debt Predators to Screw Nation's Poor

[newthinking]

Skewed Courts Team Up with Debt Predators to Screw Nation's Poor

'Rubber stamping debt buyer suits threatens the rights of poor people and ultimately undermines the basic integrity of the courts.'
by Jon Queally
CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/01/21/skewed-courts-team-debt-predators-screw-nations-poor


Courts across the United States have allowed multibillion-dollar corporations to secure judgments against alleged debtors en masse without providing meaningful evidence to support their claims, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Thursday .(Image: © 2016 Brian Stauffer for Human Rights Watch)

Courts across the United States are systematically failing poor and low-income individuals as predatory financial companies buy up large portfolios of past debt and then win profits by targeting vulnerable people who may or may not be responsible for the alleged delinquencies.

That's the key conclusion of an in-depth investigation conducted by Human Right Watch HRW), and published Thursday, which scrutinizes how courts handle hundreds of thousands of lawsuits brought every year by debt buyers – firms that specialize in purchasing bad debts which they then try to collect for themselves.

"Courts should find ways to assist alleged debtors who don’t have legal representation instead of stacking the odds still further against them." —Chris Albin-Lackey, Human Rights Watch

The report charges that courts are rubber-stamping lawsuits brought against people by these companies but that due-diligence is woefully lacking and too little is being done to protect the rights of those being sued.

"Courts should be treating debt buyer lawsuits with heightened vigilance," said Chris Albin-Lackey, senior legal adviser at Human Rights Watch. "Rubber stamping debt buyer suits threatens the rights of poor people and ultimately undermines the basic integrity of the courts."

Continued:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/01/21/skewed-courts-team-debt-predators-screw-nations-poor

[Kilgore]

1. Poorly written article

Long on words but short on facts and analysis.

Not trying to defend debt collectors, but their practices are governed by a federal law called the Fair Debt Collection Act. Here is a link.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Debt_Collection_Practices_Act

Having been in the debt spiral once myself, I took the time to find out what collectors could and could not do to me. So if the author does not like the law as written, why not say so and propose an alternative?

Instead we get lots of smoke and emotion and little else.