Yesterday, the Sunday Chicago Tribune ran a front-page story that is truly frightening. The article describes how Cook County Circuit Court "has been turned into a frenetic debt collections machine." According to the article:
More than 119,000 civil lawsuits against alleged debtors are cloggingcourtrooms, and at least half will result in judgments that debtcollectors will use to dock wages, seize bank accounts and file liensagainst homes, compounding the woes of troubled borrowers.
With the economy heading south and fewer people able to pay their bills, the situation is expected to get worse. One disturbing development is that, over the past decade a new breed of debt collectors has arisen. These collectors specialize in distressed debt, and their collection tactics are often far more aggressive than ones used in the past. Yet another cause for concern is the frequency with which the debt collectors are making mistakes, causing innocent people to be hounded into court:
But because debt collectors operate on volume—pushing through lawsuitsbased on little more than lists of names, addresses and alleged amountsdue—there are also plenty of instances of mistaken identities, caseswhere debts are alleged when the bills have been paid and evensituations where people have fallen behind and tried to work outrepayments only to be hauled in to court.
