Even before the Public Health Emergency, District consumers were already facing debt collection harassment and experiencing a dramatic increase in debt collection activities and lawsuits. The pandemic further compounded these issues and worsened the already disproportionate impacts of debt collection on communities of color.
Over the last year, our Consumer Law Unit has worked together with our Policy Advocacy team to stave off debt collection-related harms during the ongoing pandemic. We also advocated for longer-term systemic reforms to protect against unfair and abusive debt collection practices as consumers face new debt collection activity following the end of the temporary pandemic protections.
Stopping Abusive Debt Collection Practices
When our clients’ incomes plummeted at the start of the pandemic, Legal Aid and our partners successfully advocated for a moratorium on debt collection so that struggling District residents could preserve whatever income and savings they had for their most pressing needs. The moratorium temporarily staved off the spiraling impacts of debt collection for thousands of consumers during the District’s Public Health Emergency. Still, Legal Aid and other advocates urged the District to use that time to enact much-needed protections and updates to the District’s debt collection law before consumers were hit with the flood of debt collection activity waiting to resume once the moratorium ended.
Legal Aid and our partners’ advocacy focused on the need to modernize the District’s obsolete debt collection law. The Office of the Attorney General took up the cause as well, the DC Council passed The Protecting Consumers from Unjust Debt Collection Practices Emergency Amendment Act of 2021, introducing common-sense consumer protections just in time for the end of the moratorium.
Perhaps most importantly, the DC Council passed this bill on an emergency basis, meaning it was in place before debt collection cases picked up, and helped mitigate the impacts of the expired moratorium on our client community. In the coming year, we will fight to make sure these critical new protections become permanent law in the District.
HELPING INDIVIDUAL CONSUMERS
At the same time our Consumer Law Unit has been working on systemic fixes to the current economic crisis, our attorneys have also been on the ground helping low-income litigants in court, staffing a virtual court-based legal services program for individuals with ongoing foreclosure cases and a debt collection hotline.
SHANITA WOMACK
In July 2021, Shanita Womack called the DC Debt Collection Defense Hotline after she had been sued by a national insurance company for over $11,000 in an auto subrogation case for a car that was involved in a hit and run. This was surprising to her because she did not recall being involved in an accident.
Ms. Womack first learned that she was being sued when she received notice from the court about an ex parte proof hearing, after a default had already been entered against her. She sought Legal Aid’s assistance because she was never served, did not receive notice of the prior hearing where a default was entered against her, and did not know how to defend herself. The process server claimed to have served an adult that was living at her house, but Ms. Womack did not recognize the name of the person the process server claimed to have served. The only adult living with Ms. Womack at the time was her mother.
“This issue was one of my biggest worries, about it being on my background, and now that it’s gone it’s a big relief. I had a good feeling after talking to my attorney. She made me feel better because I was discouraged before I had started.”
SHANITA WOMACK
After coming to Legal Aid, Ms. Womack began working with Legal Aid attorneys Zenia Laws and Sudi Tasissa. As they were working to help her challenge the claim that she had been served and vacate the default entered against her, they discovered that Ms. Womack was not the owner or even the driver of the car that was involved in the hit and run. Although Ms. Womack once owned the car in question, the accident she was being sued for took place in May 2017, and she had sold the car approximately three years earlier.
Ms. Womack’s only connection to the 2017 accident was that the car was last registered in her name. However, this registration expired in 2014, long before the accident. With Legal Aid’s assistance, the insurance company agreed to vacate the default entered against her and dismiss the case with prejudice.
Rodney Hawkins
In May 2021, Rodney Hawkins called the DC Debt Collection Defense Hotline after all the money in his bank account was garnished based on a judgment from 18 years ago. Legal Aid attorney Zenia Laws investigated the case and learned the garnishment stemmed from a default judgment that expired in 2015. Even though the judgment was no longer legally enforceable, the creditor was somehow able to register it as a foreign judgment in the State of Maryland and issue a writ of attachment on Mr. Hawkins’ bank account.
“Legal Aid – y’all did it. You calmed me, soothed me, you gave me hope.“
RODNEY HAWKINS
Mr. Hawkins was surprised because he never got notice about a collections case and didn’t know the judgment existed prior to the garnishment. Sadly, he did recall the early 2000s as a rough period in his life when he faced addiction, eviction, and ultimately, homelessness. Having turned his life around, Mr. Hawkins was disheartened to see his rent and bill money taken away from him without any warning. With Legal Aid’s help, the creditor agreed to return Mr. Hawkins’ money, vacate the foreign judgment, and dismiss its case with prejudice.
“Ms. Zenia. She was a jewel. She took care of it, and she explained that this would never come up again.”
RODNEY HAWKINS