One Lawsuit - 2 Counts (2 Different Credit Cards)

[ScooterOhio]

Hi All,

Been lurking around the forum preparing for this. Now the day has arrived, JDB Midland Credit Management is suing me in the local court, for 2 different credit card accounts in the same suit.

Let me go ahead and cover the basic questions:

 

1. Who is the named plaintiff in the suit? Me

2. What is the name of the law firm handling the suit? (should be listed at the top of the complaint.) Midland Credit Management

3. How much are you being sued for? 12,006.20 TOTAL, Count I is $8,307.85 from Comenity/Meijer Mastercard, Count II is $3,698.35 from Citibank/Home Depot

4. Who is the original creditor? (if not the Plaintiff) Comenity/Meijer on Count I, Citibank/Home Depot on Count II

5. How do you know you are being sued? (You were served, right?) Court Website, Have not received service yet. Suit was filed this week.

6. How were you served? (Mail, In person, Notice on door) Court Website says Fedex, have not received it yet.

 

So originally I was planning a strategy of Motion for More Definite Statement followed by a Motion to Compel Arbitration on each of these suits when they came. The Comenity one allows for JAMS or AAA, The Citibank only allows for AAA.

Since these are on a single lawsuit, how should I proceed since they are governed by different agreements? Is there a way to have the courts force a split of the suit?

 

Thanks,

Scooter

[nobk4me]

I would just file an answer and a MTC Arb. Once the motion is granted, you would file two separate arb cases. Which is good, as that doubles their costs.

[BackFromTheDebt]

What kind of court is this?

Citi doesn’t have arbitration for small claims 

[WhoCares1000]

The limit for small claims is $6000 in Ohio. In fact, their trying to combine these 2 debts to avoid costs might backfire on the plaintiff because they could have done Citi in small claims court but chose not to which might invoke the arb clause in the Citibank Contract.

[ScooterOhio]

21 hours ago, BackFromTheDebt said:

What kind of court is this?

Citi doesn’t have arbitration for small claims 

The agreement that applies here does deny arbitration if they started the claim in small claims. They did not. So there is an arbitration option for this account since they filed in regular court. I have been watching the court filings for a few weeks, and looking at some older cases, and Midland is filing everything in regular court here, even stuff under 1k. But perhaps our small claims court is too consumer friendly, thus helping their lawsuit->judgement machine to just file everything in regular court.

[ScooterOhio]

22 hours ago, nobk4me said:

I would just file an answer and a MTC Arb. Once the motion is granted, you would file two separate arb cases. Which is good, as that doubles their costs.

So... would I just follow the standard templates for the MTC Arb but attach both agreements?

The reason for the Motion for More Definite Statement instead of Answer was strategic... by making them fork over the agreement, they could not then claim the arbitration was invalid as they would be the one providing it (right now all they have included with their complaint was a charge off statement... no chain of custody, no contract, nothing that counts as an "account" under Ohio law.)

[nobk4me]

39 minutes ago, ScooterOhio said:

So... would I just follow the standard templates for the MTC Arb but attach both agreements?

The reason for the Motion for More Definite Statement instead of Answer was strategic... by making them fork over the agreement, they could not then claim the arbitration was invalid as they would be the one providing it (right now all they have included with their complaint was a charge off statement... no chain of custody, no contract, nothing that counts as an "account" under Ohio law.)

First, in Ohio JDBs can't use small claims court.  So don't worry about any small claims exemptions in the agreements.

Second, now that I see your strategy, go for the Motion for a More Definite Statement first.  I was skeptical of using that, as it has not been very effective in Ohio courts lately, as a stand-alone strategy to get the JDB to go away.  Arb is generally more effective.  

For the MTC Arb, you would use the standard templates, attach both agreements, and include a separate paragraph for each account, explaining the arb clause in each account.