My first rant!

OK, I'm kind of stoked right now, and not in a good way. Not sure whether to blame our legal system or the people that are using it in a way never intended.

Debt collection agencies, if you don't know, collect debts from creditors (never would've guessed, eh?), like American Express, that the creditors don't feel like trying to collect themselves. DCAs buy these debts for like 8 cents on the dollar, as most of them are against insolvent consumer debtors, and thus not too valuable. So far so good, no bad ethics here.

Except for the fact that DCAs don't care whether the debt is actually owed. You know how you get random fees on your statements that aren't supposed to be there? Well, say you don't see your statement, or think that the debt is all taken care of, and forget about it. The creditor sells your "debt" to a collection agency who comes barging at your door.

So we have a client who's been sued by a debt collector on a debt he never owed, forced to get a lawyer to defend himself, and paid like $2000 in attorney's fees. Three months into the case we're about to set a date for trial. So we go to the conference and the opposing counsel says, "Hey, your honor, this is a really simple case, the plaintiff moves for dismissal." While we get the costs of filing, we don't get to recover attorney's fees. The DCA chalks it up as one debt they just didn't get to collect on, oh well. Our client is out two grand (and a lot of time and stress) with nothing to show for it.

Is this fair? Is this just? Is this right? I think not!

So yeah, making the hour-long drive back from the courthouse, I was angry. It was a weird sensation... I haven't been angry in a long time, but this was just such patent unjust and downright evil conduct, something welled up inside of me. Unfortunately, as usually is the case when we're mad, there wasn't anything to do about it. Except throw a tantrum, but somehow I thought my boss wouldn't appreciate it. Maybe when I start my own firm I'll throw tantrums at my employees. Heh!