Threatening to convey information to the debtor's employer violates law. It has been held that informing the debtor that immediate payment will avoid any further contact is illegal is representation as this leads the debtor to believe that immediate payment is the only way to avoid further contact with the debt collector. Referring in the collection letter to the remedy of enforcing a judgment may be a violation of law. The court said the letter falsely represented that a judgment was inevitable. In a similar situation, a statement in a letter offering to release all liens was found to be deceptive because it implied the existence of liens upon the debtor's property when none existed.
Misrepresentations also apply to attorneys.
A lawyer or law firm may not lend a letterhead or a reproduction of a lawyer's signature to a client for the client to use when sending out demand letters to collect their own debts. These are just a sampling of cases that reflect the debtors rights in dealing with third party collectors. Try to collect from a debtor in the wrong manner and you may be the one who ends up paying. These and other cases can be reviewed in the Electric Law Library found in the providers section of Creditworthy. We are looking for topics for future columns.