Debt Help, LawSuits

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Scales of justice in a California Tax Lawyer office.
If you fail to pay a contractual obligation, the creditor may sue you.  If you are being sued, it is important to seek legal representation as soon as possible.  In most cases you only have 20-30 days to respond to the law suit. 

If you fail to respond, the creditor will obtain a default judgment against you.  The creditor may then enforce the judgment through bank levies, asset seizure or wage garnishment.

We can help.  If you have a valid defense, we can file an answer to the lawsuit and seek dismissal.  In the course of our defense, if we discover evidence of illegal activity, we can file a countersuit (we file a lawsuit against the creditor on your behalf).  If your case is successful, you may be entitled to monetary damages (the lender pays you money).  In either case, we will seek to resolve the lawsuit on terms most favorable to you.

Don’t Roll Over

Often, credit card collection lawyers file lawsuits with the anticipation that the defendant (you-the credit card holder) will not respond to the lawsuit allowing the plaintiff (the credit card company) to get a judgment.  Because the credit card companies and their attorneys do not expect a fight, they often get lazy about how they file their suit. They may claim the defendant breached a contract with the credit card company but fail to attach a contract to the complaint.  Debt buyers have even bigger problems.  This is not to say that the credit card company or the debt buyer can’t prove their case but we can take the steps to make sure that they go through all of the steps necessary to make them prove their case.   Additionally, we will review any claim that you might have against the credit card company or the debt collectors that they used.   This means that if the credit card company, the debt buyer, or the collection agency that they used to collect the debt may be liable to you if they broke the law while attempting to collect the debt from you.

Prohibited debt collection activities include:

•Anonymous calls from bill collectors

•Creditors calling early morning or late at night

•Calls to friends, neighbors, or coworkers that discuss what you owe

•Threats of violence, lawsuit, or arrest

•Fake threats of wage garnishment

•Use of obscene language

•Accusations of crime

•Negative credit reporting threats

•Attempts to collect more than you owe

•Debt collectors using false names

•Attempts to collect debts that are too old or that have been discharged in bankruptcy

•Other debt collecting abuse

If a creditor has already obtained a judgment against you, we can still help.  We are very successful at negotiating favorable settlements on judgments before the creditor resorts to garnishment or bank levy.

The Law Offices of Craig Zimmerman is here to help you understand your rights and options.   We will review the lawsuit brought by the credit card holder or debt buyer (the “Plaintiff”) to determine if there are any defenses that can help you either reduce the amount you owe or defeat the lawsuit in its entirety (that means you would not owe the debt).

Being sued for a credit card debt can be very stressful.   Not knowing your options can be even worse.   We offer a Free Case Review to determine if we are able to assist you. If we are able to assist you, we will schedule a consultation with one our attorneys. The consultation takes approximately one hour. We can conduct over the telephone on you’re welcome to come into one of our offices. If we determine during our case review we are not able to help you, we will let you know and of course there is no charge.

The cost of the consultation is $250. We accept personal checks, all major credit cards, cash and money orders. If you retain the firm to defend the lawsuit, the $250 consultation fee is credited toward the attorneys’ fees.

We have experience in dealing with these law suits and in most cases, can represent you in these cases, on a “flat fee” basis (as opposed to being charged hourly). This means you will know exactly how much it will cost to defend the suit. There are no hidden fees or surprises.

Please call us at 800-987-4165 for your free case review.