Plastic perils and arbitration angst

Two credit-card debtors from Houston have brought a class-action suit against national debt collection firm Wolpoff & Abramson of Rockville, Md., which has three offices in Texas. In Nicks et al. v. Wolpoff & Abramson, filed Nov. 6 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Jeri Nicks and Clarence A. Nicks alleged that Wolpoff & Abramson violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) by "falsely and misleadingly representing that arbitration awards subject to the Federal Arbitration Act could be confirmed past one year." In the suit, the Nickses acknowledged that they had two MBNA credit card accounts that fell into default, and as a result Wolpoff & Abramson on June 11, 2004, obtained two arbitration awards totaling $20,792.74 against them. But the Nickses claim that the firm failed to confirm the awards, as required by federal law, by filing suit in Texas within a year of that date. The firm eventually filed two suits in Texas, one in 2006 and another in 2007, to confirm the awards. The Nickses seek to certify a class action consisting of "all persons residing in Texas who were sued in the past year by Wolpoff & Abramson to confirm an arbitration award that was more than one year old at the time of filing." The Nicks seek statutory damages under the FDCPA, costs and attorneys' fees.
-- Jonathan Fox