| Volume 134 Number 3 |
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The People’s Lawyer’s Tip of the Day
Texas generally does not allow your wages to be garnished, even if you are sued. The exceptions are debts for child support, student loans and certain taxes. Click here for more.
Loans ‘Designed to Fail’: States Say Navient Preyed on Students
[T]wo state lawsuits filed by the attorneys general in Illinois and Washington, [allege] that Sallie Mae engaged in predatory lending, extending billions of dollars in private loans to students . . .that never should have been made in the first place. New details unsealed last month in the state lawsuits against Navient shed light on how Sallie Mae used private subprime loans — some of which it expected to default at rates as high as 92 percent — as a tool to build its business relationships with colleges and universities across the country. From the outset, the lender knew that many borrowers would be unable to repay, government lawyers say, but it still made the loans, ensnaring students in debt traps that have dogged them for more than a decade.
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Your Money
New York lawmakers approved the tuition initiative this weekend as part of the state budget. Under the plan — which New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo proposed in January — the state will supplement aid for in-state residents whose families earn $125,000 or less, providing tuition-free education at all state public two- and four-year colleges. Per College Board data, public colleges in these 10 states have the least expensive average in-state tuition: (10) Mississippi; (9) North Carolina; (8) Alaska; (7) Idaho; (6) Nevada; (5) New Mexico; (4) Utah; (3) Montana; (2) Florida; and (1) Wyoming. Click here for more.
For the Lawyers
Debt collectors letter not disclosing debt was time barred violates Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Assignee debt collector alleges that in 1993, consumer incurred a debt for annual fees, an activation fee, and late fees for a credit card that he applied for but never actually used. In 2013, long after the statute of limitations had run, collector sent a dunning letter trying to collect. The letter claimed that Patoja owed $1903 and offered several “settlement options.” The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. 1692e, prohibits collectors of consumer debts from using “any false, deceptive, or misleading representation or means in connection with the collection of any debt.” The Seventh Circuit affirmed the district court judgment for consumer, agreeing that the dunning letter was deceptive or misleading because it did not tell the consumer that collector could not sue on the time-barred debt and it did not tell the consumer that if he made, or even just agreed to make, a partial payment on the debt, he could restart the clock on the long-expired statute of limitations, bringing a long-dead debt back to life. Pantoja v. Portfolio Recovery Assocs., LLC (7th Cir. 2017). Click here for more.