Cavalry SPV I LLC asked to produce signed contract

[MikeJones]

In question is a debt of $12,000 from an old Citibank card, junk collector Cavalry SPV is now pursuing me.

I have answered all of their requests and interrogatories and attended a pre trial conference May 2.  I believe I caught them offguard as they assigned a new local lawyer that very morning.

At the Pretrial I denied everything and the Cavalry Lawyer kept badgering me for my birthdate and social security, I simply stated you guys should already have this and know who I am.

Long story short, the Judge asked Cavalry as to where is the signed contract?  The Cavalry attorney stated here is 100’s of pages of statements, 4 years worth showing plaintiffs name.  The Judge (luckily a notorious anti-junk debt judge) again, smirked and asked, again, where is the signed contract to show the defendant is the owner, the Cavalry Attorney sat silent.  To which the Judge scheduled yet another pre-trial in June.

Being a novice pro se, I immediately the next day filed a request for production, the first request was to “produce any credit application signed by the defendant”.  Today I did indeed receive a response to my request that states, “Objection the request calls for the production of documents in excess of the two year record retention period set forth in CFR 226.25 Plaintiff states that it is not in possession of any document which may be responsive to this request.”

So now my question is, do I wait for the next pretrial and see what the Judge says, or in the meantime file a more definitive motion ?  Their evidence is 4 years of credit card statments from 2008-2012. Card charged off in 2012.  

What is the best course of action?

[Harry Seaward]

The judge in your case is looking for any reason to go against Cavalry.  You can probably do nothing more and he will rule against them.  The problem for you is that a signed contract is not required to prove you incurred a debt.  I'm sure your judge knows this but, as I said, he doesn't care and just wants to stiff Cavalry.  Since this is a $12,000 debt, I would expect Cavalry to appeal a 'no signed contract' judgment against them, at which point the appellate court will find the trial court erred and will kick the case back to the same judge who will have no choice but to award a judgment to Cavalry.

I'm sure it's too late now so this is a lesson for next time, but you could have made this go away using Arbitration if you had executed that strategy before getting into discovery and too far into litigation.  Who knows, a judge like yours may still go for it at this point.