About two weeks ago a young man came into my office. He was in his late twenties, dressed casually in jeans and t-shirt. His hands were rough with callouses and the nails were dirty and packed with grime. He was a plumber, and spends most of his time on his on his hands and knees cleaning up other people's worst messes. So immediately I know this is a salt of the Earth kinda guy. Not only that, when he sits down he hands me a folder. In it are a set of documents from the United States Army. This guy was a Disabled Combat Veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. That's where he'd learned the trade of plumbing.
He told me his problems and immediately I was angry. While he was on active duty with the Army, stationed in Alabama, preparing to be deployed to Iraq; somebody with the same first and last name was in Clearfield, Utah signing a lease they never intended to pay. This wasn't a case of identity theft. It was just one of those unfortunate coincidences. During his tour in Iraq my client was injured and honorably discharged because of his injury. He came home, met a girl, had some kids and continued his life as a plumber in the private sector.
That's when the chickens hatched by someone else came home to roost in his barn. It just happens that my client is from Roy, Utah. That's only a few miles up the road from Clearfield, Utah, where this lease was signed by the other man with my client's name. Well, the other man had skipped out on his lease. The landlord had given up pursuing the debt and had handed it off to a collection agency in Salt Lake City.
While the true debtor on the lease had skipped town, the collection agency pursued the first man they found with the same first and last name: my client. Knowing he was in the right, my client refused to pay the debt. He erroneously believed the truth would come to light on its own and he would be vindicated of this false debt.
He was wrong. When he refused, after countless calls and letters, to pay the debt, the collection agency hired a lawyer and filed suit. Now this is where it gets scary. Most people believe the courts will help you sort these things out. The truth is, my client didn't have a chance. With no attorney and no knowledge of the legal system in our country, the collection agency and their attorney won a default judgment in their favor. My client had lost... and now he had a judgment in his name for the amount owed by this other guy with the same name.
You ask me how I know my client is telling the truth? Because I have his service record from the U.S. Army. That record tells me exactly where he was the day the lease was signed by the other man with the same name. My client was in Alabama that day and shortly thereafter he was in Iraq, serving our country.
Why is this all so scary? Because the collection agency and its attorney just found the first person whose name matched the name on the lease (a la the Terminator methodically going down the list of John Connors in the phonebook and executing each one in order to get the right one). This could happen to you. It may already have happened to you.
How could my client have avoided this? He should have called me first thing last year when he was contacted by this collection agency. The Fair Debt Collections Act allows you to challenge any collection and debt. By doing this, the collection agency or creditor has thrity days to provide you with written proof that you owe the debt.
This would have been an easy case to win had my client had me working for him last year during the original suit. Now we are going through the difficulties of a motion to set aside his judgment. Hopefully, the judge will have some mercy on this national hero.
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