Affidavits Are Not a Substitute for Evidence of Debt Ownership
The Tennessee Court of Appeals has issued a decision that highlights the problems facing credit card debt collectors in a post-robosigning world. The decision reaffirms what should be a simple principle in a debt-collection lawsuit. The burden is on the debt collector to show it owns the debt and to show the consumer is liable for the amount the debt collector asserts. The debt collector’s say-so is not enough.
In LVNV Funding, the consumer had opened a Sears Gold Mastercard account in 1985 and was being sued for a balance that was a little more than $15,000. He had not used the account since 2001 and thought it had been settled in 2005.
One might first think Sears was the plaintiff. It was not. Sears had sold the account to Citibank, but Citibank was not the plaintiff either as it had sold the account to Sherman Financial Group. The plaintiff was LVNV Funding, a subsidiary of Sherman Financial to which the account had been assigned.
Rest here…
Copy of the opinion below…
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4closureFraud.org
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In LVNV Funding
Well, we have the same type of law here in Florida. How many times do you see “affidavit of lost note” in a foreclosure case? And how many times will a judge accept that affidavit and issue a final judgement in favor of the bank and set a sheriff’s sale? I am fighting my case now on just that same premise. 3 years later the lender all of a sudden finds the note but only submits a “copy” to the courts – not the original as is mandated by the Florida Statutes. They never ammended the original complaint; just filed a Notice of Filing…WTF? Then, because it was Florida Default Group (yea, you know them) they filed another notice to change the name of the law firm from Florida Default Group to Ronald R. Wolfe & Assoc. Very good because this same group is now being investigated for FRAUD by the elustrious Bondi. To make matters even better the note was supposedly assigned from the original lender to Chase Bank but the plaintiff in my case is Chase Home Finance LLC, which turns out was not even registered with the State of Florida as a lender. There is no assignment of record from Chase Bank to Chase Home Finance LLC but here they claim (3 years after the fact) that Chase Bank merged with Chase Home Finance in May 2011 – 3 years after the initial filing of my foreclosure! Talk about fraud!!! So, here I go again with another filing to the courts……