I find it really amusing when the junk debt buyer is suing you and answers your interrogatories with nothing but objections.

To begin with, they send it to you and you go into a panic wondering how you are going to answer all of these questions. You’re not even sure if you should answer all them and how you should go about answering them. You see all the legal mumbo jumbo they have used and you wonder what you are going to do in order to complete it. You panic and hope you do it the right way.

You spend all of this time worrying and then one day in your mailbox you receive their completed discovery for you. Amusingly, they don’t actually answer anything truthfully and use lots of legal jargon to get around answering the questions. So, don’t panic when you have to answer your own discovery because they don’t worry about answering the discovery you sent off to them, or how it is answered.

The collection attorney’s response to your discovery will contain lots of legal jargon. They love using it and they love objecting to everything you asked them by putting ‘irrelevant’ in almost all of their answers. So it really isn’t worth the panic when you have to answer your own discovery. Consider this a big circus ride because that is all it is. As the defendant, you panic and want to do things correctly. You probably spend many hours answering your discovery and the plaintiff, the junk debt buyer, could not care less and objects to 99% of the discovery you sent them. So, should you be afraid of doing the same thing? Absolutely not.

Here are some real examples of answers to discovery interrogatories that defendants have received from junk debt buyers:

• Objection, the request is irrelevant, immaterial and not likely to lead to admissible or discover-able evidence.


• Objection, in that the plaintiff is not the original creditor and does not presently hold all of the documentation and information associated with the original account. Plaintiff further objects in that the request is overly broad and unduly burdensome in that the request seeks information that is in the possession of the defendant or that is readily and easily accessible or obtainable by the defendant. (Well, if the junk debt buyer suing you doesn’t have all the documentation and information associated with the original account, I believe that is a major advantage for you. See how they turn it on the defendant? Stating that you have everything to prove their case, not them? Well, it is not your job to prove anything for the plaintiff. The plaintiff is suing you and should have all the documents to back themselves up, not have you gather documents against yourself).


• Objection, the request is irrelevant, immaterial and not likely to lead to admissible or discoverable evidence. In addition, the plaintiff objects to the extent the request seeks information subject to attorney-client privilege. (So they are saying we don’t have anything and they think that we’ll sacrifice the attorney client privilege just to answer this question!)

That is all they do; they copy and repeat each of the above for all of your answers.

So, why should you panic when answering your discovery? Do you believe that they answer truthfully? No, they just go around every single question with the above answers and send it back to you. Meanwhile, you were hoping that you nailed them with your discovery questions and couldn’t wait to see their answers only to find they have gone around all of your questions with objections and attorney-client privileges.

That is why answering the interrogatories they send you should be handled the same way. Don’t give them any information to help them win in court.

The plaintiff sued you so let them come up with all the documents!