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New York - AG Cuomo Sues 35 Law Firms Over Debt Collection Mess |
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State AG Cuomo suing 35 Debt collectors
The lawsuit seeks to overturn nearly 100,000 legal judgments entered against people who failed to respond to court claims over their debts.
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says many of those people didn't reply because they didn't know they were being sued.
He says a Long Island company hired to serve legal papers on thousands of debtors wasn't bothering to track them down.
That company, American Legal Process, of Lynbrook, already faces fraud charges.
Now, Mr. Cuomo wants all the judgments based on those tainted cases tossed out.
A lawyer for ALP blamed the problems on a few bad employees.
The law firms and debt collectors named in today’s suit are: Forster & Garbus; Sharinn and Lipshie; Kirschenbaum & Phillips, P.C.; Solomon and Solomon, P.C; Goldman & Warshaw, P.C.; Eltman Eltman and Cooper; Eric M. Berman, P.C.; Stephen Einstein & Associates, P.C.; Fabiano and Associates; Jones Jones Larkin O’Connell; Panteris & Panteris, LLP; Zwicker and Associates; Relin, Goldstein & Crane; Woods Oviatt Gilman; Leschack & Grodesnky; Hayt Hayt & Landau; Pressler & Pressler; Jaffe & Asher; Mullen & Iannarone; Arnold A. Arpino & Associates; Houslanger & Associates; Mann Bracken, LLC; Smith Carroad Levy & Finkel; McNamee, Lochner Titus & Williams; Thomas Law Office; Fleck, Fleck & Fleck; Eric Ostrager; Cohen & Slamowitz, LLP; Cullen and Dykman LLP; Winston & Winston, P.C.; Cooper Erving & Savage, LLP; Robert P. Rothman, P.C; Gerald D. DeSantis; Greater Niagara Holdings, LLC; Rodney A. Giove; Advanced Litigation Services, LLC; and Jason L. Cafarella.
Attorney General Cuomo also announced that as part of his ongoing investigation into fraudulent process servers and debt collectors, his Office is determining which other law firms statewide relied on ALP to serve legal process on New Yorkers facing lawsuits. More than 20 such firms have been identified to date and his Office is notifying those firms of its intent to seek to vacate any default judgments those firms have obtained based on ALP affidavits of service.
This civil lawsuit and investigation is being handled by Assistant Attorney General James Morrissey and Assistant Attorney General Nathan Reilly, in conjunction with Dennis Donnelly, George Danyluk, Aric Andrejko and Dan Johnson of the Internal Audit Unit of the New York State Unified Court System.
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Read Comments (2) — Post Yours »
1
Jul 22, 2009 at 08:25 PM mike Says:
As an attorney I can tell you these law firms are greedy slimeballs hat make their using phony law suits on people who were never served with papers and never had a chance to defend themselves.
2
Jul 31, 2009 at 01:51 PM Anonymous Says:
as an attorney you should also know that being served with a summons and complaint is not the first step in a collection proceeding. it is not the attorneys in this case that are slime balls, but the employees that were too lazy to do their job as servers. (by the way, I am not an attorney, but I used to work for some and I have also been a debtor - so I have a pretty good idea of the process!)