Debt Collectors Pushing To Get Their Day In Court

[Purveyor]

More aggressive strategies fill court dockets, result in mistaken identities

Cook County Circuit Court has been turned into a frenetic debt collections machine, a reflection of easy credit gone sour and a collections industry determined to get paid.

More than 119,000 civil lawsuits against alleged debtors are clogging courtrooms, and at least half will result in judgments that debt collectors will use to dock wages, seize bank accounts and file liens against homes, compounding the woes of troubled borrowers.

But because debt collectors operate on volume—pushing through lawsuits based on little more than lists of names, addresses and alleged amounts due—there are also plenty of instances of mistaken identities, cases where debts are alleged when the bills have been paid and even situations where people have fallen behind and tried to work out repayments only to be hauled in to court.

"The system is out of control," said Michelle Weinberg, a supervisory attorney at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago. "It's one thing to call a debtor on the phone. It's another thing to file a lawsuit in court."

The cases that bother the judges the most are those where people have simply fallen behind because of illness or job loss or inability to keep up with escalating bills, a situation that is expected to worsen as a result of rising food, gasoline and housing costs.

"These people aren't deadbeats," said Cook County Circuit Judge Daniel Gillespie, whose docket contains 12,000 debtor suits, about double from two years ago. He also supervises seven courtrooms on the Daley Center's 11th floor where such cases are brought. "These are real people with real problems," he said.

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-sun-debtchasers-jun08,0,5667609.story