We were retained by a client living in Arizona who had 5 NY judgments on his credit report and was distraught by the effect these judgments were having on his credit score and ability to obtain credit. He was completely unaware of the actions and had no idea that he was ever sued. This client was a disabled military veteran that struggled with returning to civilian life after his service ended. Due to his disabilities, he was unable to work and was in and out of shelters and the VA hospital’s care for several years. Thus, during the years that he was in collections and then, subsequently sued for these underlying debts, he had no address where he could receive service of process. Our client provided us with a timeline of these shelter and hospital stays, and we coupled this information with the fact that he was only receiving social security and veterans benefits to dismiss these judgments for him.
We contacted each law firm representing the creditors to work out these judgments. First, Selip & Stylianou represented two of the creditors: Metro Portfolios which had a judgment for $4,168.41 and Gemini Asset Recoveries which had a judgment for $5,584.64. Asset Acceptance, another debt buyer had a judgment for $5,375.25 and their judgment was with its in-house attorneys which are the same attorneys for Midland Funding, another common debt buyer; while LVNV Funding held the biggest judgment for $14,739.90 and were represented by Forster and Garbus a common debt collection law firm. After telling these firms that we would be moving to vacate these judgments and telling them about our client's hardship, we pressured all the firms to vacate the judgments against our client and discontinue the matters with prejudice without any payment from our client.