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In my Atlanta area bankruptcy practice I sometimes get calls from a very anxious man or woman who tells me that their payroll office has received a wage garnishment order but the employee has no idea why or where it came from. What should they do? Here is how I would approach this problem.First, understand that you have to move quickly. If your employer receives an order of continuing wage garnishment, they have to honor it within 45 days – here is what the summons looks like.If your employer does not honor the garnishment and withhold wages, your employer can be “punished” for not obeying the order by having the entire judgment held against the employer. debt. Needless to say, your employer does not want to get stuck paying your debts.Who is the Plaintiff?Your first step should be to find out who the plaintiff (creditor) is in your case and the basis of their claim. If the holder of the garnishment order is a student loan creditor or a taxing authority, different rules apply and you need to speak to a lawyer immediately.If the claim is from a collection agency, there is a good chance that this debt has been sold multiple times by creditors and collection agencies so you may not recognize the name of the collection agency.For example, if you owe a debt to Chase Bank for a credit card, Chase may have sold that debt to Allied Systems, who may have sold it to LVNV or some other agency. Do not assume that the claim is bogus simply because you do not recognize the name of the plaintiff.When was a Lawsuit Filed Against You?If a creditor has obtained a judgment against you that means that the creditor has previously filed a lawsuit and obtained a judgment. About 95% of judgments on consumer loans are default judgments, meaning that the creditor filed a lawsuit and no one filed a written answer or otherwise responded.You may be able to find out the details of the lawsuit by using online court records. Most magistrate, state and superior court clerks in the Atlanta area offer online case search so you may be able to discover a case number and the name of the collection agency’s lawyer.If you reach out to the collection lawyer you may or may not get very far. Most collection law firms in the Atlanta area are volume practices that file dozens of cases every day. They also hear all kind of stories and denials from upset defendants. If you can get hold of someone who will talk to you, ask for copies of the lawsuit and a copy of the “return of service” showing when and by whom you were served.Was Service of the Lawsuit Valid?Before a judgment can be entered, you have to be legally served with a copy of the lawsuit. Usually sheriff’s deputies handle service. I have seen many cases where service was invalid – a busy deputy knocked on the door of whatever address is on the lawsuit, handed whoever answered the door a stack of papers then left.If the address on the lawsuit was inaccurate, or old, the deputy may have served someone who is not you and you would never have known.Sometimes the judgment against you is a “domesticated judgment” from another state. In these cases, a plaintiff sued you at an address they had for you in another state. Here, too, if no one answered they would get a judgment in that state then they would hire a lawyer in Georgia to “domesticate” the judgment in the county where you live or work.The rules of service can vary from state to state but generally speaking, you can be considered legally served if the sheriff’s deputy confirms you live at a residence and then hands the lawsuit to a competent person.This means that service may be valid if the sheriff’s deputy knocked on your door and handed the lawsuit paperwork to your teenage son, or to your 85 year old mother. If the “return of service” paperwork shows that the sheriff’s deputy came to the address where you lived and handed the lawsuit paperwork to someone in your household it will be very difficult for you to convince a judge that you were not properly served.On the other hand, if you have a common name like Smith, Johnson or Thompson and the address on the lawsuit is one where you never lived, it will be much easier to prove that you were not properly served.If service was bad, you can make a “collateral attack” on the judgment. This means that you are not addressing the merits – do you owe the debt or not – but you are asking the judge to undo the judgment because service was bad and you were denied your legal right to respond.My experience has been that if you can prove that service was defective most collection lawyers will voluntarily vacate the judgment and the garnishment. They may then start the process over again using the correct address but you will have weeks or months to either negotiate a settlement, mount a defense or file bankruptcy.Your Credit Reports May Reveal Essential InformationAnother part of your research should be to request a copy of your credit reports. You can do this for free at AnnualCreditReport.comAnnualCreditReport.com. Your credit reports should document to whom you owe money and if a lawsuit has been filed.Your immediate goal in the case of an unexpected wage garnishment is to stop the garnishment to give you time to decide what to do. If you really do not owe the money, you can ask for your day in court or perhaps your day at a mediation table. If you do owe the money, you will want time to either negotiate a settlement or to talk to a bankruptcy lawyer.As I noted at the beginning of this article, do not delay in taking action. Getting money back from a garnishing creditor is much more difficult than preventing the wage garnishment in the first place. Further, even if the debt is not legitimate, you could end up legally owing it if you do not assert your rights.Ginsberg Law helps men and women in the Atlanta area deal with debt problems. If you are facing a lawsuit or a wage garnishment, we’d be happy to help you. Our number is 770-393-4985.The post What Should You Do About a Surprise Wage Garnishment? appeared first on theBKBlog.

Supreme Court Might Allow FDCPA Suits More than a Year After Claim Arises
Holding: Statute of limitations begins to run when the alleged FDCPA violation occurs, not when the violation is discovered.

Rotkiske v. Klemm, 18-328 (US Supreme Court, Dec. 10, 2019) The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) authorizes private civil actions against debt collectors who engage in certain prohibited practices. An FDCPA action must be brought “within one year from the date on which the violation occurs.” 15 U. S. C. §1692k(d). Respondent Klemm & Associates (Klemm) sued petitioner Rotkiske to collect an unpaid debt and attempted service at an address where Rotkiske no longer lived. An individual other than Rotkiske accepted service. Rotkiske failed to respond to the summons, and Klemm obtained a default judgment in 2009. Rotkiske claims that he first learned of this judgment in 2014 when his mortgage application was denied. He then filed suit against Klemm, alleging that Klemm violated the FDCPA by contacting him without lawful ability to collect. Klemm moved to dismiss the action as barred by the FDCPA’s one-year statute of limitations. As relevant here, Rotkiske argued for the application of a “discovery rule” to delay the beginning of the limitations period until the date that he knew or should have known of the alleged FDCPA violation. Relying on the statute’s plain language, the District Court rejected Rotkiske’s approach and dismissed the action. The Third Circuit affirmed.
Held: Absent the application of an equitable doctrine, §1692k(d)’s statute of limitations begins to run when the alleged FDCPA violation occurs, not when the violation is discovered.

MUSINGS FROM DIANE:
For decades collection companies (and some creditors) have ignored the law because they knew no one was watching.  If their bad acts were discovered, they merely close the door (perhaps pay a large fine, but far less than what they earned) and start a new business with the same immoral attitude about collecting debts.  Then Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (www.CFPB.gov) was established.  Unfortunately, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was gutted by Mr. Trump, but I am certain that under the next administration the organization will return to its original goal of protecting consumers.

This case shows the tide is somewhat changing and we can only hope that momentum continues.

How Can I Help You?
The post Supreme Court – Statute of Limitations under FDCPA appeared first on Diane L. Drain - Phoenix Arizona Bankruptcy & Foreclosure Attorney.

The Epic Rise and Hard Fall of New
York's Taxi King
By Brian M. Rosenthal
.
Dec. 5, 2019

Evgeny A. Freidman in his garage in Long Island City, Queens. Sasha Maslov
The man known as the Taxi King arrived at his 2014 holiday party in a $384,000 Ferrari, wearing a custom Italian suit. He told the guests
whom he had invited to an upscale Manhattan club - including executives, politicians and celebrities - that he had flown in from SaintJean-
Cap-Ferrat, a town in the French Riviera where he owned two villas.
Five years later, that man, Evgeny A. Freidman, stood in a mostly empty courtroom in Albany, N.Y., as a judge sentenced him to probation
for tax fraud. In a hushed voice, he said he had lost everything.
"I'm trying to be remorseful and understanding for anybody I might have harmed;' he told the judge at the hearing in October. "I'm very
humbled by what has happened."
For more than a decade, New York taxi industry leaders got rich by creating a bubble in the market for the city permits, known as
medallions, that allow people to own and operate cabs.
In several articles this year, an mvest1gat10n by I he New York limes found that government officials stood by as mdustry leaders
artmciio~tiji\laAe~~$Uiffia§atr!d5:hanneled immigrant drivers into loans they could not afford to purchase the permits. The lea(iers
reaped hundreds of millions of dollars before the bubble burst, wiping out thousands of buyers who are still mired in debt today.

And no one embodies the glittery rise, unfettered recklessness and spectacular collapse of the industry more than Mr. Freidman.

A Russian immigrant and a cabdriver's son who got his nickname by building the city's biggest fleet, Mr. Freidman was a primary
architect of some of the tactics used to build the bubble, according to records and interviews. At the height of the market, he had
accumulated $525 million in assets. He befriended the filmmaker Spike Lee, the baseball star Mo Vaughn and Mayor Bill de Blasio. His
outsize antics and lavish spending often landed him on Page Six, the New York Post's gossip column.
As a generation of cabdrivers became trapped in overwhelming debt, Mr. Freidman created offshore trusts that protected some of his
money when the bubble burst, records show. While his business partners lost millions because of his tax fraud, Mr. Freidman avoided
prison by cooperating with a federal investigation into one of his partners, Michael D. Cohen, President Trump's former lawyer.
"He hurt so many people in so many different ways;' said David Pollack, the former head of the Committee for Taxi Safety, an association
of fleet owners that once included Mr. Freidman. "Your headline could be: 'The man who brought down the taxi industry.'"
Mr. Freidman did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Government officials declined to answers questions on why they did not
intervene sooner.
This account is based on interviews with more than 20 of Mr. Freidman's former associates and a review of thousands of pages of court
records and other documents.
Mr. Freidman is now cooperating with prosecutors who started investigating the taxi industry after The Times published its series this
year on the exploitative tactics that drove medallion prices to soar past $1 million by 2014 from $200,000 in 2002. He has met with them
three times so far.
'I'm in , you 'r e out'
Mr. Freidman, 49, who is known as Gene, likes to portray himself as a scrappy fighter who rose from first-generation immigrant to
multimillionaire solely through his wits and fists.
But like everything involving Mr. Freidman, the reality is more complicated.
He was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1970, an only child. Six years later, his family emigrated to New York, he has said in interviews.
His father, who Mr. Freidman said had been a thermonuclear engineer, got a job as a cabdriver but soon began buying medallions and
building a fleet, records show.
Mr. Freidman attended the Bronx High School of Science, Skidmore College and Cardozo Law School. Afterward, he has said, he moved to
Russia to work in private investing.
Mr. Freidman has said in speeches that he returned to the United States in 1996 at the request of his father, who had become a successful
and respected fleet owner. During the flight home, he crafted a plan to use what he learned in Russia to revolutionize the taxi industry.
His idea was straightforward: He wanted the industry to take more risks to increase profits.
Specifically, Mr. Freidman has said he wanted lenders to allow medallion purchasers to borrow more money, with smaller down payments
and longer repayment periods. Former associates said he believed this strategy would allow him and others to buy more medallions,
enable lenders to increase profits and, mostly, drive up medallion values. He believed that would spur more purchases, more loans, more
profits and even higher medallion values.
"I walked in and took over;' he later recalled. "I told my dad, 'I'm in, you're out.'"
Prominent - and polarizing
Mr. Freidman was 26. He was cocky, but he needed help. He turned to the small nonprofit that had lent to his father, Progressive Credit
Union, and its chief executive, who had become a family friend, Robert Familant.
Between 1997 and 2004, Progressive's loans enabled Mr. Freidman to buy about 100 medallions to expand his fleet, according to city
records and former associates.
At the same time, Mr. Freidman became a licensed broker and helped some drivers purchase medallions, mostly using loans from

Other industry leaders used similar tactics. But few were as aggressive as Mr. Freidman.
More Mr Freidman's success emboldened others, and helped encourage lenders to push low-income
drivers to take on massive loans to buy medallions.

"He changed the market:' said Ira Goldstein, a former chief of staff at the city commission that oversees the industry. "People copied him,
and it affected everybody, including the driver-owners."
Mr. Familant did not respond to requests for comment.
As Mr. Freidman expanded his fleet, he became increasingly prominent - and polarizing.
To his allies, Mr. Freidman was charming and passionate, with a perspective that improved a long-stagnant industry. He put his fleet in
several neighborhoods, making it more accessible for his drivers. He worked long hours. He embraced energy efficiency, becoming the
first to use hybrid cabs.
Others saw him as vindictive and vulgar. Lawsuits have accused him of cheating his drivers, clients and partners. Last year, he was
ordered to pay $1.3 million to an assistant who sued him for sexual harassment. On his desk, he kept a snow globe sprouting a middle
finger.
The highest bidder
Mr. Freidman unleashed his most radical idea on June 16, 2006, at an auction where the city sold new medallions.
At the time, a medallion cost $350,000 on the private market, according to a Times analysis. But at the auction, Mr. Freidman and his
associates bid $477,666.50 apiece.
They won all 54 medallions sold.
The results reshaped the small medallion market. In effect, Mr. Freidman single-handedly had increased the value of all medallions,
including ones he had owned for years - and also increased prices for everyone, making it harder for drivers to buy without enormous
loans.
Years later, Mr. Freidman admitted he had intentionally overpaid to inflate the values of medallions he owned. He said in a 2012 speech
that he used the values to persuade lenders to loan him more money.
"I would bid crazy prices. People would look at me like I'm crazy, and I wouldn't care:' he said, "because I would look at the prices and say,
'This is market value."'
Mr. Freidman repeated the strategy at three other auctions, records show. In all, he bought more medallions at auctions than anyone else
in city history.
Riches and power
The medallion bubble turned Mr. Freidman into a remarkably rich man.
His fleet had about 900 of the city's 13,587 medallions. Most were owned by others who charged him a fee for the right to operate their cabs
and keep the profits. He personally owned about 250 permits, and at the height of the market, each was worth $1.3 million, although they
were mortgaged, records show.
Mr. Freidman knew the prices would not last, according to five former associates. So he used the medallions as collateral to borrow money
that he invested elsewhere.
He bought 20 commercial properties, records show. He opened locations of a French whimsical pajama store in New York, Arizona,
California, Georgia and Washington state. He acquired medallions in Chicago and Philadelphia, helping to spike prices in those cities.
He bought a 4,000-square-foot townhouse on Manhattan's Upper East Side, an estate in the Hamptons and a condo in Chicago, in addition
to the French villas.
He also invested in politics. He donated to former Representative Anthony Weiner's 2013 mayoral campaign and to Mr. de Blasio. Later, he
bragged to associates that Mr. de Blasio placed one of his friends at the taxi commission.
Mayoral spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein rejected that notion. "Any suggestion that we hired anyone at his request is a blatant lie;• She said that "The mayor ceased contact with Gene Freidman as soon as he realized he was a bad guy."

Mr. Freidman also began managing Mr. Cohen's medallions. They became friends; during Mr. Freidman's divorce.

Several of Mr. Freidman's former associates said as he became wealthier, he stopped paying his debts.

During the bubble, when Mr. Freidman was worth millions, he was sued or otherwise accused of failing to fully pay his drivers, employees,
clients, partners, lawyers, contractors, landlords, lenders, an accountant and a car dealer as well as child support payments, association
dues, insurance premiums and taxes.
Between 2013 and 2016, the state ordered him to pay nearly $1.5 million for cheating drivers. But he has failed to fulfill that order, too,
records show.
The aftermath
Now that the bubble has burst, Mr. Freidman is awash in lawsuits and eviction notices.
A judge ruled in 2016 that he transferred more than $60 million into trusts in Belize, Nevis and the Cook Islands in order to avoid paying
creditors. Mr. Freidman had defended the transfers as part of estate planning. "It is impossible to conclude that the timing of the transfers
is merely coincidence;' the judge wrote in ordering the trusts to pay the creditors.
The tax fraud case, filed in 2017, involved two surcharges collected by cabs that Mr. Freidman owned and ones he managed for others: a
50-cent fee for regional transit improvements, and a 30-cent fee for more wheelchair-accessible taxis.
Officials initially accused Mr. Freidman of pocketing more than $30 million.
But after agreeing to cooperate against Mr. Cohen, he ultimately repaid $1 million to the state and $826,000 to the city. In addition to five
years of probation, he had to exit the industry and authorize officials to seek $4 million more in the future. (Mr. Cohen is now serving a
three-year sentence for campaign finance violations and other crimes.)
"He no longer has any involvement whatsoever in taxi operations in New York City. He's done;• said Allan J. Fromberg, a spokesman for
the city Taxi and Limousine Commission.
The city and the state have also demanded millions from the owners who entrusted medallions to Mr. Freidman's fleet, even though they
did not know about the scheme or benefit from it. The taxi commission did not respond to questions about the collections. The state
attorney general's office, which prosecuted the tax fraud case, declined to comment, citing its ongoing investigation into the industry.
"It's unbelievable;' said one owner, Robert Rosen, 72.
Mr. Rosen, who said he committed his medallion to Mr. Freidman because he knew his father, lost $30,000. "The things the government
has let this crook get away with. It's shocking!'
Susan Beachy contributed research.

In a previous article, Wynn at Law, LLC, highlighted why the holidays are an ideal time to discuss your estate planning needs. The old adage ‘there’s no time like the present’ holds true with estate planning. So, here is a little more detail on the most common, and sometimes overlooked, planning tool: The Will.
There are three types of wills about which you should give some thought. The Last Will and Testament is what most people know about and refer to generally as a “Will.” In addition to the Last Will and Testament, there is also a Living Will and a Pourover Will.
The Last Will and Testament
There are dozens of online templates that suggest you can do this yourself. The problem with that is simple: How many have you done? An experienced attorney will help you create a legally binding document that specifically suits your needs, expresses what your final wishes are, and is tailored to Wisconsin law. That’s so important, because the tool speaks for you after you pass on, directing how you want assets divided and appointing who will be in charge of acting on your estate’s behalf.
The Living Will
The Last Will and Testament becomes effective at your passing, while the Living Will speaks for you when you are unable to speak for yourself due to injury or illness. This document makes known your wishes regarding life prolonging medical treatments. This tool, also called an advanced directive, is every bit as important as the Last Will and Testament. However, a University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia study found that less than a third of adults have a Living Will.
The Pourover Will
We’re covering Trusts next in this series, but you should know that this particular tool can save the day for your loved ones. When you forget or neglect to add all property into your planning documents over the years– and people do forget to go back and revise their estate plan when circumstances change – this tool puts the forgotten property into a Trust. This tool got its name because any assets you failed to title into your trust prior to your passing will “pour over” into the trust after you are gone.
Stay up to date
You’re going to want to review all of these Wills and your wishes periodically, too, because ‘life happens.’ In the following two articles on the Estate Planning Toolbox, Wynn at Law, LLC, guides you through Trusts and Powers of Attorney.
The post Your Estate Planning Toolbox: The Will appeared first on Wynn at Law, LLC.