well wait just a minute for the courtroom to clear and there's actually no dispute as to the amount of the debt so we don't have before us a case in which somebody says you only three hundred dollars and then oh it actually turns out maybe the insurance company has already paid one hundred fifty that we are we have amounts of stipulated to that in the summary judgment briefing artist so if you've passed third grade arithmetic you should also be able to figure out what five percent interest on you know a hundred dollars is at the end of the year five percent per annum interest perhaps you can but all these letters were sent oh before the there was any long before there was an east stipulation to the amount of oh this is first of all wisconsin does seem to recognize that prejudgment interest merely puts the creditor in the position that the creditor would have been in had the debt been timely paid it's just the time value of money so it's not clear to me that it's understood as anything punitive and you know one i understand that maybe the day they got that the letter but if we know that this is wisconsin law permits it's only for liquidated get right if there's if this is some fuzzy thing that nobody knows what the amount is we're not even talking about this  especially with medical deaths i mean if we meet in general you know as as as you said before at the time the letter to the time the letters are sent the time that they're calculating the not like a tort claim you know where somebody is suing because they were in a car accident they hurt their back you know i mean that's not a little dated to be certain contract claims where consequential damages hospital not a liquidated debt you know i'm charging you one hundred thirty five dollars for an m r i although they're not that cheap but he has has a dollar or whatever a thousand dollars has a dollar amount or a could charge me of one hundred thirty five dollars and someone else under correction but they're not trying to collect somebody else's death trying to collect yours let me ask you a different question which is why the safe harbor doesn't apply here that the state law claim i'm also going to ask you the question why does state law govern pre judgment interest for the federal fair debt collection practice act well this is really sorry which which one would you want units of first the safe harbor receive herbert leaving it's a question of it's a question of law the there's certainly no deference i don't know is this a question of deference to state statute says if there's no response then you can keep doing it until somebody tells you you can't know how that would preclude wouldn't that preclude any judicial review ever of this type if in that situation because to me you could have a lawsuit saying this is the wrong interpretation statute going forward you can't collect it this way that they're trying to create legal certainty for past federal court may not have you know that have the ability to hear that because they couldn't enter a judgment in favor of those people and the state court might not have compensate competency to handle that for the same reason well the pre judgment interest presumably if the court were to rule the other day way would stop running you know as of the date of the judgment i can imagine that i think since nothing in the argument says that they can't charge pre judgment interest after according to its terms what you're making as an argument that there shouldn't be a safe harbor or that the state should have written a different statute but why doesn't it apply according to what's actually on the b administrator does not approve or disapprove of the submitted act practice or procedure within sixty days it quote shall not be deemed a violation of chapters this and that notwithstanding that the approval  if you don't hear from us it's not a violation of the the the problem is that whether the interest is permitted or look or not in this circumstance is a question of was that but so w under this statute what difference does it make what label you apply about them or facts the state statute seems to say if you send a letter to the administrator and if the administrator is silent then you're entitle to that the you know there that position is just completely completely at odds with all the cake and all the decisions saying that sometimes  statutes for the purpose of upsetting decisions right i really would appreciate it this is your only opportunity to address the actual language of the statute and explain how your position is consistent not be deemed to be a violation of chapters four twenty one four twenty seven and four twenty nine i mean so that's that's pretty clear because these people tried to take advantage of it they they sent a letter i don't see why they have some obligation when they send a letter to brief the letter to the nth degree so i'm not really that worried about the fact that there might have been a failure to cite that the each case for example doesn't matter the administrator is in charge of this area well yeah i mean the administrator you know it is their decision and we're non decision is totally at odds with all the other cases and this isn't a sure you know there are a whole lot of federal statutes like this if you propose certain transactions to the federal reserve and it doesn't respond within ninety days you can proceed through the statute books both state and federal have things like this  doing nothing in this situation when when the the case laws establishes very clearly that the pre judgment interest is a damages award and you know maybe in this case not just ok yes if that's your extremely brief this morning from a presentation is i think the legal issue for the court is actually very straightforward under fifteen us c section sixty ninety two f one  we know that the practice of collecting five percent interest is not a violation of the f t c p a so can you answer my other question a lot is the new we have two theories in this case one of them arises under the wisconsin consumer act one of them arises under federal legislation if the fair debt collection practices act and certainly state law governs the question whether five percent interest can be collected on liquidated debts for purposes of the wisconsin statute is this a federal issue or a state issue on the federal side of the ledger i believe wholeheartedly  resolved by reference to in this case state law the statute says it's not a violation provided the practice is permitted by law and so t question we have to look to state law to determine whether a practice of collecting five percent interest is permitted so permitted by law in your view means permitted by state law in this instance ye anybody looked at this this specific i mean there may not be any meaningful difference this court has said for example that prejudgment interest in any event is part of full compensation under a wide variety of statutes so i'm not sure that there be any conflict any way that it could matter occasionally but i do think your honor as nice as applied to the facts of this  case in addressing specifically the question of whether there is a violation of the f t c here that question is is determined by reference to wisconsin law as to whether five percent interest is permissible now some of your communication i guess we don't really have the forest of question about your communications to the debtors we've there you set out here the initial communication very clearly shows how much is principle and how much is interest but then the later communications seem to just add on the interest i'm looking for example at the creditor account to the to the dentist dr blocker it starts out as a principle of one thousand and four dollars balance one thousand and four dollars and then seventy three cents even though it says interest is zero i don't know where the seventy three cents popped in but then the next time something comes out the balance is just simply stated to be one thousand and forty six dollars and sixteen cents so the the debtor apparently is supposed to i from one thousand and four dollars or one thousand and four dollars and seventy three cents which every number you want to use up to the next one the same thing is true of these other communications as interest so some of them seem to indicate interest  some of them just added on correct so some of the so the communications the communications treat it differently but generally alert the better the future interest of five percent per year may be added to the account and as i think it was covered with mr blanton earlier in this particular case there is absolutely no dispute that these are liquidated amounts there's no dispute as to the amounts of the debts in each instance and so it requires nothing more than a straightforward neath magical calculation to determine what and distributed to the interest but you also have to save all of your old communications with america left because it's just sort of a number on these things you wouldn't be able to work backward to the original principal amount if you didn't save all the old letters  just a fact it's not there on the letter i mean we've suggested that you should say you know if you pay today it's whatever you know one thousand and eight dollars but interest could be added in so you need to check to get the actual there could be seen to be some tension between the part of the law that says if the administrator doesn't approve or disapprove the practice shall not be deemed to be a violation and then turning right around and saying notwithstanding that we can so that we can later subsequently amend or rescind or have a traditional or other authority to be invalid that the scope of that last clause is unclear and we may have before us yet another ambiguous wisconsin statute which if you were in the courtroom we've already had at least one surprisingly my clients invoked it and i believe that it was intended by the legislature to enable parties my clients position i believe the legislative purpose or intent behind the statute is is clear it's a complicated statutory scheme questions like this will arise from time to time but it administrative agency as to whether that proposed practice is permissible and in the safe harbor gives that party the ability to proceed as  department of financial institutions deem is that the proposed practice is or would be a violation they can certainly notify the regulated party of that conclusion  think that the sixty days having run with out any response from the a t f i does dispose of the legal issues for this course to whether there was a violation ask you this and this is sort of a random question i assume in an earlier question that the pre judgment interest doesn't get assessed until the date when the debt w excuse me so the review statute that he was talking about as well allows only allows the trade group for a potential defendant to petition the the the yeah let's move on interest this is the problem with their position right the interest to cruise when it when a demand is made on the liquidated claim but in this case we don't really know whether the demand is made and the claim is liquidated maybe maybe it's the date the bill was sent maybe it's the date that the stipulation was filed in the court proceeding maybe you know maybe they're not entitle to it at all for one reason or another because the president was wrong on the amount you know that we might turn up in discovery you know this this whole thing isn't even really about interest i mean there are tactic it's  liquidated or not even if it is down the road i have trouble with that proposition because these medical providers in this particular case anyway all entered into i mean they all send bills out the bills junk at paid they all enter into agreements with a collection agency they have provided services for which they've not been compensated in these agreements between the providers in the collection agency they say you know to the extent the law lets you do it please get pre judgment interest too and none of that strikes me is not reflecting an interest in getting paid for the service with the revert the route that is the situation with rivera shows that that's not even what's going on w schooling his case the debt collecting the creditor the medical provider did eventually sue him well you know they forewent the interest and so maybe people will do that sometimes but i am not sure that means that they're not trying to collect a debt anyway well we'll see so thank you very much thanks to both counsel will take the case under adviseme