Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Illinois

I could use some help and/or advice on a legal matter. During 2008, I started having a dispute with a company that provided advertising services for my company. There were problems with the Ads and I attempted to work with my account representative to get the problems resolved. He was sympathetic, but he was having problems getting his back-office supporting staff to resolve the issues. I informed him at the time that if they kept making the errors, I would stop paying for the Ads. The errors continued and I stopped paying for the Ads. Subsequently, the company threatened to sue me and turned the collection activity over to a law firm that specializes in collection activities. I hired an attorney to dispute the charges and represent me in this matter. Eventually, after a thorough review of the disputed charges, I agreed with my attorney to make an offer to settle the debt to avoid litigation. I also understood that I had received some benefit from the Ads, but not the total benefit. We offered approx. 40 to 45% of the amount claimed by the advertiser. The offer was made via a letter from my attorney to the advertiser�s attorney. The advertiser�s attorney acknowledged that they had received the letter, but since that time, there has never been any other communication from the advertiser or their attorney and that was approx. 11 months ago.

Then in late December of last year, I was served papers at home for a court case in another state related to some of the same debt. In this court case, there were two other parties involved that had advertised with the same advertiser and somehow they were attempting a collection activity against all three of us in an adjacent state. None of my Ads had run the state in which I was being sued and in fact, I had a non-compete clause which forbade me from doing business that state. Thinking that this was simply a clerical error, I contacted the attorney that had filed the action to explain that this was a mistake and to ask him to correct his court case. He refused to return my calls and I was forced to hire legal representation in the other state to represent me in this matter. After paying more legal fees, my attorney was successful in getting the case dismissed, however, I wasn�t able to recover any legal fees, so I was out even more money in responding to what I considered a frivolous court case.

Well last week I received a letter in the mail from a firm that specializes in working through debt issues with businesses and it referred to a court case which I assumed was the recent case in the adjacent state. However, when I checked the records, I realized that it wasn�t the recently dismissed case, but it was a newly filed case in my state/county by the same law firm that filed suit in the adjacent state. I have yet to be informed of this law suit by the attorney or the court, but I found out they have 30 days to do so and it was filed 20 days ago.

Here�s my question � Does the law protect me from multiple legal collection actions from the same company? I am a struggling small business and I can�t afford all of these legal fees. As a result of their first collection activity through the law firm they hired to perform the collection, I spent thousands of dollars in legal representation to attempt to negotiate a settlement in good faith. We received no response to our offer, neither a rejection nor an acceptance. Now through a completely different law firm in a different state, I�m being sued for some of the same debt and of course this other law firm has absolutely no knowledge of all of the information regarding the circumstances of why the money wasn�t paid. i.e. all of the information that lead up to the settlement letter provided to the first legal firm. I don�t have enough money to pay for repetitive legal representation against all of these actions which pertain to the same debt. It feels like harassment from the advertiser and the only people that are benefitting from all of this are the attorneys. Any advice that you can provide would be greatly appreciated.


Asked on 6/22/10, 5:35 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Stephen Messutta

I did not read most of your question -- I jumped to the bottom. First, without seeing the paperwork that creates the indebtedness nobody can tell you for sure. But if you are being sued by the same creditor for multiple debts, you can seek to have all of the matters consolidated into one lawsuit, which may help if a judge grants such a motion. If you're being sued multiple times for the exact same matter, however, then if the multiple lawsuits aren't dismissed voluntarily you may be entitled to fees and costs to get them dismissed on the basis of "specious" pleadings.

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Answered on 6/23/10, 11:37 am


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