Bill Collectors’ Tactics Cost Firm $11 Million Harassment, Name-Calling, Threats Used Over $2,000 Debt
The phone calls came at all hours of the day and night, interrupting Marianne Driscol’s sleep and disrupting her work.
The callers threatened her life, she said. They called her a “bitch” and worse. Ultimately, she fled El Paso with her husband - all because a collection agency was pressuring the couple to pay a $2,000 credit-card debt.
Now, it’s the credit-card company that owes.
A jury awarded the Driscols $11 million, ruling that the bill collectors hired by the company went too far.
“They literally scared the hell out of this poor lady,” Marianne Driscol’s attorney, Noel Gage, said Thursday. “She cracked, they broke her, they literally broke her.”
The state jury ruled Wednesday that Household Credit Services Inc. of Salinas, Calif., and the now-defunct Allied Adjustment Bureau violated the state Debt Collection Practices Act. The law prohibits debt collectors from threatening violence or making harassing or obscene calls.
The Driscols were awarded $9 million in punitive damages and $2 million in actual damages.
“It’s outrageous,” said Household’s attorney, Robert Skipworth, adding that the company will appeal. Household must pay the entire amount since Allied has folded.
Collection agents made numerous profanity-laced phone calls to the Driscols’ home and office in 1991 and 1992, made at least one death threat and phoned in a bomb threat to her place of work, according to the lawsuit.
Household didn’t dispute the Driscols’ complaints but said Allied was an independent contractor and was doing things on its own, in breach of its contract with Household. Allied never responded to the lawsuit and offered no defense at the trial.
Household received several complaints about Allied and eventually terminated the collection agency’s contract, Skipworth said.
Gage said, however, that even Household employees made threatening calls to the Driscols.
Gage said the Driscols eventually moved to New Mexico, but he wouldn’t say where.