Defending against third party debt collectors

Watch as Attorneys Tom Olsen and Colonel Airth discuss defending yourself against third party debt collectors. 

Attorney Tom Olsen: We've been focusing on debt collection.  Credit card companies and other lenders will sell their debts to third parties and those third parties will try to collect those debts. Is it easy to defend these type clients?

Attorney Colonel Airth: Absolutely, it can be the easiest thing in the world. Just challenging their ability to sue because, even though it's a debt, even though it's something that may have existed for years, the collection company still has to prove their case if they file a lawsuit against you. So I'm going to talk about the situation where they've sued you, in that situation you can challenge that debt and they have a very, very difficult time proving their case. 

Everybody's heard of hear-say. On a piece of paper in effect it's a hear-say and the only way you can overcome that is through - and this is kind of in the weeds, if you will, from a talk show type thing, but if they sent you a statement it's a piece of paper. They cannot give this to the judge, "Here's the statement that we sent him and therefore he owes us $1500." That's not how it works. The collection company must prove that the numbers on that paper were properly prepared by people with some experience and knowledge on how to do it, that they did it at the time it was performed etc. to get into the records, the exceptions of the here-say rule, that the Business Records act allows. 

So that in effect you get a CCH of whatever the name of those individuals, or some third party who has bought your debt, who sued you in small claims court or county court or even circuit court. They simply can't prove that case. And if they can't prove it that means if you go to court and fight them you win and they lose. And sometimes you can even collect attorney's fees from them. They wise up for that so oftentimes they don't sue you for attorney's fees because of that, so you can't sue them back.