Midland Credit Management Lawsuit: What to Do When the Letter Arrives — and Why Panic Is Exactly What They Want

When they receive a letter from Midland Credit Management, the majority of people go through something akin to controlled panic. The letter arrives, sometimes unexpectedly, sometimes after years of silence on a debt they had partially forgotten, and it uses language that is meant to move quickly. legal evaluation. participation of an attorney. an already-passed deadline. Pay now or suffer the repercussions. Many people who are sitting at kitchen tables staring at that paper have an innate tendency to either call right away and agree to something or stuff it in a drawer and hope it disappears. Midland Credit Management is counting on both of those answers.

In the traditional sense, MCM is not a collection agency. It is a debt buyer, a division of San Diego-based Encore Capital Group, one of the biggest firms of its kind in the US. Purchasing portfolios of past-due consumer accounts from banks, credit card companies, healthcare providers, and other original creditors—typically for a small portion of the debt’s face value—is the simple business model. Cents on the dollar at times. Next, get the customer to pay the entire amount, keeping the difference. After purchasing the debt, MCM acquires legal ownership of it; they are not collecting on behalf of another party; instead, they are the owners of the claim, which grants them the right to file a lawsuit.

They also file lawsuits. Regularly, violently, and in almost every state in the nation. For MCM, litigation is not a last resort; rather, it is a standard operating procedure when correspondence and phone conversations fail to resolve an issue. There is a significant legal apparatus. MCM files a large number of cases in state civil courts, hires or contracts with lawyers in several jurisdictions, and mainly depends on the fact that a sizable portion of defendants just refuse to answer. MCM may seek a default judgment if a defendant fails to reply to a summons within the allotted time, which is normally 20 to 30 days depending on state law. This ruling then opens the door to far more aggressive collection methods, such as property liens that make it difficult to sell or refinance a home, bank account levies that freeze or drain funds, and wage garnishments that take money straight out of a paycheck every pay period.

Midland Credit Management Lawsuit: They Bought Your Debt for Pennies — Now They Want Every Dollar Back

The actual leverage in MCM’s model is the default judgment. It transforms an ambiguous legal claim into a right to collect that is mandated by the court. For this reason, whenever someone is served with an MCM lawsuit, consumer lawyers always advise them to respond to the complaint. Before the deadline, submit anything, even a simple denial. Because after you reply, MCM must genuinely demonstrate its position, which is when things start to drastically change.

Experienced defendants and their lawyers have learned to take advantage of a particular weakness in debt buyer litigation. MCM buys debt portfolios in bulk, which frequently include thousands of accounts. The original signed credit agreements, the full account statements, and the unambiguous chain of title that demonstrates each step from the original creditor to MCM are the documents that occasionally don’t transfer smoothly. The legal right to sue on a specific debt is known as standing, and it must be established by the plaintiff. The case becomes precarious if MCM is unable to provide a convincing paper trail demonstrating its ownership of the particular debt it is suing to collect. “One of their greatest weaknesses is the fact that they can often not back up their claim to the debt with a chain of evidence,” a customer wrote on a public forum after defeating MCM twice without legal representation.

It is important to comprehend the separate history of class action and regulatory liability. A $13 million fund for customers who received automated or prerecorded collection calls without prior consent was established when MCM resolved a class action lawsuit alleging violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Because the TCPA allows for statutory damages of $500 to $1,500 for each unlawful call, consumers who frequently received unsolicited calls may have had individual claims that were significantly more valuable than a pro rata portion of any class settlement. In addition, MCM was awarded more than $700,000 in a 2011 federal judgment for failing to sufficiently look into credit reporting disputes. This ruling addressed the more general question of whether MCM’s reporting procedures complied with legal requirements for accuracy and appropriate investigation.

Anyone dealing with an MCM collection attempt should pay close attention to the statute of limitations. The time frame within which a creditor can lawfully enforce a debt through the courts varies by state; in some, it can be as short as three years, while in others, it can be as long as ten. Outside of that window, debts are time-barred, which means MCM is not legally able to get a judgment on them. Time-barred debts cannot be sued under the FDCPA. The legal calculus can be completely altered by knowing when the initial debt was incurred and when the last payment or charge-off took place. In certain situations, this can turn a scary lawsuit into a document that should be thrown out.

Given that the recipients of these letters are, almost by definition, those who were already experiencing financial hardship when the initial debt went unpaid, it is difficult to watch this industry function at scale without feeling a little frustrated. The majority of people don’t know their rights, don’t react promptly, and fall into conclusions they didn’t have to accept, which is why the system functions. The 2011 federal judgment, the $13 million TCPA settlement, and the ongoing consumer defense lawsuit all indicate that the business operates at the legal boundaries of collection practice and occasionally crosses them. It’s not difficult to follow the rules, send a debt validation letter, check the statute of limitations, and reply to a summons if one is served. However, they must be acknowledged.