I was reading around on the Internet tonight and I read an interesting post on a message board regarding Midland Funding collection lawsuits and had to post it.

I thank the poster and will keep their message board ID confidential.

Here is that post:

My county holds civil court once each week on Monday. At 9:00 a.m. they list all of the cases where people have been sued and give the defendant the chance to admit the debt or deny it.

Most end up as defaults, either because the defendant doesn’t show or because they admit the debt.

If they deny the debt, they are set for the 10:00 a.m. docket at a future date to give the parties time to prepare for trial. I post here when I see something that I think is relevant.

These are my observations from the 10:00 a.m. docket this week:

The cases set for trial that were handled by Mann Bracken were all dismissed. I suspect that they could not obtain the evidence from the original creditor.

One feisty woman that I remember from court a couple months ago said then that she owed the original creditor, but did not owe Midland anything because they purchased the debt and she had never done business with them. Her case was dismissed just before it was to be tried. I assume that Midland had no proof of the debt nor the right to collect on it. Mann Bracken was the attorney.

Of interest, Midland had three different attorneys representing them. Almost all the other junk debt buyers use only one attorney. Another Midland attorney kept telling the judge he had no records to prove the debt. On the trial docket, he dismissed all his Midland cases.

All of this is consistent with what I have read here. The junk debt buyer attorneys are not prepared to go to trial because they don’t have the documents. In six months of watching court most weeks, I have only seen one junk debt buyer case go to trial, and that was last week when they had a confirmation of an arbitration decision and had the paperwork.

The lesson learned here is to ask for a trial.

The other lesson here is that if you get sued, go to court and watch, so you know what to expect. It is not scary at all.