Our client was initially sued in 2005 by Houslanger & Associates, on behalf of their client Colonial Credit Corporation. A default judgment was not enforced until almost two years later in 2007. Palisades LLC, a debt buyer eventually bought the debt from Colonial and enforced this judgment against our client. A default judgment was enforced against the client because he had moved to Florida and had no clue that he was sued or that a judgment was enforced against him. Houslanger and Associates were able to freeze his bank account although he was out of the state and even though the judgment against him was not domesticated.
The debt at this point in time had risen to almost $10,000. We immediately contacted Houslanger & Associates to resolve this case. We argued that this debt buyer would have a difficult time proving that this debt was properly assigned to them since it was bought and sold multiple times. We felt that it was unlikely that Houslanger could show us chain-of-title proving the sale of the debt from one buyer of the debt to another. The debt buyer would also have a difficult time complying with the hearsay rules by having agents of the debt buyers come in to testify that this debt was actually properly acquired. Finally, we made it clear that our client lived in Florida from at least 2004, at least a year before he was sued in 2005. Houslanger and Associates agreed to have the judgment against our client vacated and we were able to reach an out of court settlement for $800 in total, off of the almost $10,000 that had accrued.