will dispense with reading the calendar we have three cases to be argued the first is huge nervy midleton credit management and we are ready to begin with that case in reviewing this case it's clear there when the judge finally made his decision regarding sanctions the judge had come to conclusion as he put it that this case had made a mountain out of a molehill a case generally speaking the facts are rather concise in this case for example the facts truly surrounded one phone call which lasted perhaps a couple of minutes that is the entire case there is not days and days of testimony with all kinds of evidentiary rules and issues that might follow from that it's a simple conversation what the the point  fact way that this case proceeded created many of the issues that the judge complained about himself by way of example the first thing that this judge didn't in the case was to complain about the complaints to spawn to a it wasn't because the complaint was somehow under article three lacking in jurisdiction it was that the complaint included too much it was the initial action by the judge was that the plaintiff was required to amend its complaint not because of a lawyer in terms of what your honor is referring to the if you look at the case that was brought which is brought basically because middle funding did not permit the plaintive to simply dispute his that orally that argument that in fact middle funding would not permit any consumer to dispute that orally was something that was was brought up by the consumer protection bureau itself against middle and funding and so even if you were true which again there is no record that it was true it's certainly possible for counsel to go on in that day on if the c p a case which was based upon his client's conversation about an oral dispute and misstated and misstated that without it being a lawyer i'm sorry judge the complaint not lanch that there was a violation as the pla i would say that the the the tape certainly does not indicate that the middle funding representative told the plaintiff that he could not disputed that orally but it know i don't believe that the complaint actually specifically said that but what the couple complained complained that in fact he was not given his right to dispute it orally and if you look at the factual record here it in fact indicates that when levy you know cold and said that he wanted to dispute the debt what happened was that the representative said if you want to dispute the debt you need to hold for the next representative in other words if you don't hold for the next transcript of the conversation that was furnished i think by you i think it was furnished by the plaintiff invited in the middle and invited the plaintive to disputed orally they said what is your dispute tell us what your dispute is now i would disagree with that judge what what happened here doesn't start with that part of the conversation it starts with the ten what i just said well it contains it contains what you said but your honor is concluding by that that they invited him to make a dispute and i would say what is your dispute yes that is true of there was a conversation in which they question mr you as to what his dispute was based upon that is correct which under the law mr huber was not required to give them an explanation in order to make a dispute are about the conversation regarding the dispute which again starts off with a conversation in which the minute mr huber mentions that he wishes to dispute he is placed on hold and then after waiting quite a time he then gets to the next representative at the so called dispute department and the first thing that something wrong with transferring him to the dispute department i would say yes and no i think it can be done correctly if somebody says i dispute the debt and you answer we have noted your dispute we would like you to hold to speak to the dispute partment to see whether we can resolve you dispute that would be fourteen but if someone has a right to dispute without giving any other explanations and says i dispute the debt and you tell them to stay on hold you are and i believe that the with the standard certainly lease fist the consumer certainly could believe that he is required to i want to dispute this debt and he's asked what is your dispute and he says i don't have to give you a reason i just disputed what should they do with a a dispute what do you think the lawyer means as to what what they should do with a dispute as to which the disputer refuses to explain what is his dispute though so the first thing that should be done is to acknowledge the dispute and indicate that in fact the dispute is being recorded on his file after doing that with somebody says they do not wish to give an explanation it seems to me that at some point it simply harassment to continue asking the question but again in our case we don't have that example we have somebody being placed on hold without any acknowledgement that his dispute is required to be recorded and then when the person gets on the first questions that are asked are confirming his address which again under the f according to what we have the record what was done following phone calls essentially to close the file and ceased to attempt to collect it that's correct but if you read the whole history of this case you'll see that this is not the first collection agency to attempt to collect this debt and this court another courts have basically ruled that debt collectors can sell their debts one to another and with each new debt collector one again has to deal with exercising their rights whether it's written disputes or orally disputes over and over again so the notion that there shouldn't be a dispute recorded when the courts have basically all said that it's ok for this  collection account to go from one collector to another it seems to me is somewhat contradictory in order to protect your rights disputes need to be recorded and have been done for had in fact the prior collection agencies mr gable's what he said was if i wanted to dispute this and i'll quote the line and i want to know if i want to dispute the debt what would i have to do at that point the account manager who has the ability to mark an account is disputed said he's looking for additional information on how to go about disputing a case so he directed to a miss elliott in the customer service special who specializes in disputes at all times during the call based on the transcript they acknowledged to dispute and what they did at the end of that conversation was they put in a code a code two eighty nine and we know from the record what that does one it marks the account  disputed on our credit files it sends a signal to the credit bureaus to delete the trade line so we no longer exists on a credit report that went through the process that very day additionally on that day there was a letter sent to appeal huber correctly addressed not returned as undeliverable telling him exactly what million credit management did they requested the deletion of the trade line to cancel didn't dispute but even if he did dispute at the outset even if he did dispute with the account manager and he can't manage or transfer them to a special secure as with these disputes there is no violation there it's a continuation of a phone call they didn't attempt to dissuade him while the telephonic initial conference during the course of the telethon from the initial conference there is no record but we do know is obviously from the complaint the second version of the complaint the first version was soo a spontaneous dismiss because it didn't comply with with shortened plain statement it read as a brief when they corrected that problem there was also a joint plan that was submitted to the court where they repeated the fact that million refused to accept a verbal dispute they demanded it in writing so what cemented the joint the joint discovery plan that was submitted to the court in advance of the initial conference so you have a right you have the record there but the judges understanding of that conversation was correct they kept this theory through from there from their second complaint through the initial comments they made blatant misrepresentations appellant pulled directly blatant misrepresentations during initial conference he approached it in bad faith and was properly subject to sanctions for violating the sixteen under eleven the the penalty for that is appropriate it tells attorneys don't come to court and don't act to benefit you there's a consequence for your actions i don't think this jet this reflects a bias by the court this was simply the district judge trying to tell a plaintiff's attorney as well as a plaintiff to do that to do the job the right way if they have a valid claim put in a complaint and if it turns out it doesn't honoring a dispute cannot ask questions concerning the nature of the of the dispute now the f t c pace certainly doesn't support that argument and there is no case on that supports that argument there are cases out there like that the santas decision by this court that says you can't condition a dispute process in a dispute based on a valid reason you can provide a valid reason you can provide in a bad reason you can provide no reason at all and millions procedures are very clear on that they accept verbal disputes whether you provide a reason whether they don't provide a reason the day market is disputed here mr huber said in his conversation  customer service specialist elliot he said two things he said how can i get this off my credit report how do i dispute this she acknowledge a dispute she explained to her you can't number of reasons one is probably the value of the debt itself it was one hundred thirty one dollar debt you have the individual complaining acting invasively there is a certain sensitivity to for debt collectors particularly the specialists on those quote unquote set up cause they're fairly prolific there are a lot of calls to debt collectors where people are trying to set up at the c p a claims and obviously this this evokes some suspicion so it wasn't worth pursuing it so the process is so so that's what happened here milling turns around and the automated process not only request deletion from the credit bureaus at that point sure it has to go through the process about six days later but then they as it's to ensure that between requesting deletion of the credit agency and informing the credit agency that the debt is disputed is that correct that that's correct if you if you were poor that it's disputed you put into dispute code is a zero five zero as is is the code that that miller puts into their system and it shows that it's disputed in this case and that's fine and that's what happens you get a verbal dispute a coded zero five zero it goes in and it's marked as disputed on the train line and  goes on from there a mental actions continue here the customer service specialist decided to take the step further but unfortunately they had of getting sued for good deeds but that's but that's what happen here the argument that you somehow deletion goes further than the dispute dispute becomes moot if the debt is simply to lead on the right to collect it said i'm not collecting it i'm i'm simply abandon absolutely absolute is exactly what happens and and so that is exactly what happened there so they went over above and beyond the longer right and the course of the bigger issue was a verbal dispute somebody says i virtually dispute this you don't have to cease collections you can continue collections what you can't do and if there's a dispute you cease collection pending their cation well that that's an interesting issue because i disagree with that i think that when you have a verb the way the f t c p a reads six hundred ninety two g a it talks about two aspects one is the dispute and it doesn't say in writing you can verbally dispute it's clear from the statute validation if you want to stop collection if you want to go and validate your day at the at the c p i it's plain language says it has to be in writing there's there's what and i understand that there are that the second circus addresses issue in the in the third circuit they said everything's got to be in writing and the speech got to be in writing and this sort of says you can verbal dispute but i think that that kind of misses the point i think you can virtually dispute and you have to mark it is disputed that is all moot in connection with this case  right on the receipt of a verbal dispute with no reason given to support the dispute the the the the owner of the debt simply cancelled the debt and said you no longer owed the advised the credit agencies by the credit reporting agencies that there's no debt that's corrected appellate humors position that may not be correct in every verbal dispute if there's a verbal dispute they had a market is disputed and they continue collections to remove this case absolutely absolutely that is that is what happened here so that's the that's the issue they're just moving on quickly to to the other sections to use a mechanism to resolve whether something should be marked confidential whether it be like that how you quote confidential despite that they had complete disregard of those particular terms they found a twenty two page letter motion to the court the court rejected it we get a joint letter we explain why they weren't following the process in the letter they went forward anyway and the judge once again hit them with sanctions entirely appropriate and finally the  big sanctions this case was brought in bad faith and it was bought for the purposes of harassing my client into settlement it was brought on a lie that's not me saying it that's the judge saying it it was brought on  it was maintained after that like kind of got they put window dressing on the lie and he proceeded forward with a new theory a new theory that was equally flawed at the get go it's not supported by the f t c page it's not supported by case law we pla they proceed my client incurred a lot of expense in defending the case at the end of the day were proven right their case was basis it had no basis in law and the court then decided to award the sanctions now we didn't get what we expected you're saying that the motivation you're saying that the plane is motivation in pursuing the case was to get a settlement in order to be able to collect legal fees that's all that that's the case that that's the situation and of course they ve magnified and brought a case that they should have known from the get go it was baseless even under their second claim they should have been aware their claim that we were fit that we're asking a question in the context of a dispute management is a violation of the claim but hopefully they don't ask questions of questions how did you encourage this debt if you pay a prior a nonexistent debt what does that mean those are questions that we're trying to ask in order to resolve the debt if possible just very quickly the typical situation is somebody can we send a letter out your one thousand dollars on a citibank that somebody calls up and says i dispute this step because i don't know one thousand dollars well what do you have six hundred it turns out that's the principal when you add the late fees and other and interest costs and all that it comes up to a thousand so the person says i only zero seven hundred dollars and we go ok pay the seven hundred dollars the dispute is resolved the debt is settled they pay their bills like they're supposed to and that's the end of the story that's that's the we satisfied we didn't appeal it and i think that's all thank you inches in connection with this we reserve the right under rule thirty eight we believe this is a continuation of the vexatious litigation but i think it's  the assumption that because the the debt is now removed that it could not appear again on a credit report i believe is incorrect we see that will the time with identity theft and this case also demonstrates it by the fact that this is going from one collection agency to another and so because you've removed a direct report from a credit report does not mean that you can't also indicated it's disputed certainly we have the technology available to do such a thing it's not something that somehow would be considered soaps surd you'd rather have it reported as a continuing with disputed debt that has no all now you want it is correct that in terms of what happened benefits the plaintiff in terms of removal and of course the plaintiff is not complaining about its removal however it would also benefit the plaintiffs and would be in accordance with law or if it was disputed because if it came up again it would have that mark that's not a absurd thing to say and i understand that if you look at the case you might say well what really happened to levy you know who's a lawyer but the fact is that the standard in that's happened to you again i think your honor is correct getting something off a credit report is very advantageous to the consumer but it should also be indicated that in fact that is disputed and both those things can be done this is not simply a racing something that's written in pencil and removed that's not how things work today if this thing exists it exists in a sense for ever and certainly compact despite the fact that it's been removed from report and that's happened in many cases so it's not a a far fetched a crazy idea that someone who wanted to be disputed which is what the statute says by the way in fact the statute i guess i could argue could have said that if  remove it from the credit line you need not market is disputed i don't see that in the statute but again it could also be common sense i guess is in a common sense well it's common sense but it doesn't really fit into the reality of today the reality is that reports come back and back and back and while counsel for the respondent is busy arguing how his collection agency just collects debts in a fair way for people who really owe the money and simply refuse to pay that's not necessarily what these cases demonstrate bad debt collectors and that's not what the consumer financial bureau is busy with with debt collectors who are honest and fair reasonable and frankly don't need any regulation whatsoever it's not reality the reality is that when you call midden funding they have a system and the system is designed to get information and if you and that's precisely what happened here because when that call was elevated even lady you people who is a sophisticated to col a debt or even he gave his address to that person and i as a lawyer and any lawyer would have said don't give them that information in fact that's what the f t c says random of many miranda many read to give them information it's against your interest here's a warning here's another warning write a letter and yes we have your you thank you thank you i will take a natter under submission