Issuers Face Their Own “Foreclosuresque” Legal Crisis

As an increasing number of debt collection cases end up in court, the proceedings are looking more and more similar to the painful foreclosure settlement scene that included multibillion-dollar settlements paid out by big banks.

American Express and Citigroup are among the issuers who often find themselves relying on “erroneous documents, incomplete records and generic testimony from witnesses,” the New York Times’ Jessica Silver-Greenberg writes, in an environment where some companies are apparently “churning out lawsuits without regard for accuracy, and improperly collecting debts from consumers.”

Noach Dear, a Brooklyn-based state civil court judge, estimates to Silver-Greenberg that “90 percent of the credit card lawsuits are flawed.”

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