My First Entry: We are unconventional!

It has occurred to me that in this era of technology, more and more people are publishing their thoughts to carry them across to a wider audience. People often comment that my office and I are unusual as attorneys go. Perhaps this is because you may walk in and find a plumber/ magician making balloon animals for the staff or perhaps it is because various friendly Hip Hop artists may be performing while bankruptcies are being filed. In any case, the point of this blog and all future entries is to chronicle some of the more bizarre and crazy goings ons at Rosenberg and Press, LLC such as the homicidal Birthday Clown who disrupted our foreclosure sale. (details to be provided in a future entry).

Today I am thinking of Consumer Litigation, specifically a little known federal law named the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. This law governs and regulates the activities a debt collector is allowed to take. I love telling clients about it. They never understand at first. If the debt collector violates this law, you are entitled to up to $1,000.00 dollars as a penalty plus your attorney fees. Cool stuff! Lets go chase some bottom feeding debt collecting bastards right!? So for a quick review, these collection agencies cannot call before 8AM after 9PM, cannot contact you once notified of your attorney, cannot mischaracterize the debt, their identity, their actions, the original creditor or any other pertinent information, they cannot threaten, intimidate, insult or scream at you. They cannot call you at work if they have been told it could hurt your employment, they must be licensed, they must give your mini Mirandas "This is a contact from a Debt Collector. Any and all information obtained will be used for the purpose of collecting this debt". And so on and so on. There are many more violations, but suffice to say anything unscrupulous or immoral in the collection process is usually a violation. My question is this, when you tell someone you can get them a grand and possibly the release of a debt, why are they too stupid to follow your directions. This is paint by numbers people. All I ask is you keep a diary of dates, times, names, and what was said. ANSWER THE PHONE! You may just start hearing the kaching of a cash register that I do!

So back to my story...

Not all bottom feeders are easy to pursue. Many con-artists are now situated in other countries, often Pakistan, where they thing they are immune to this law. They change their names and refuse to give any information on the debt until you pay half. Its a joke!! So I get on the phone with them, knowing sometimes that they are untraceable ghosts. This is when I vent my frustration from the world on Mike or Adam who are more likely VeeJay and Suresh. "You motherless ^%&$ biscuits! and so on and so on." I get so insulting that they usually hang up on me. I even feel bad about it later, but recently one of them slipped. I now have a name and address. Soon papers will go out. Will we get paid? Maybe. In any event I will be back. Its the weekend and my youngest son has a croup cough I must attend to.

This being my first experience in blog writing I will try to be more entertaining in the future. I encourage all questions, criticism, constructive or otherwise. I will try to add an entry at least once a week. Thanks folks.