Daily Digest – January 24. Getting to Know Michael O’Meara; Judge Certifies Class in FDCPA Letter Suit

The Daily Digest is sponsored by Microbilt. Designed to help debt collection professionals, MicroBilt’s platform of recovery and skip tracing tools provide quick, convenient, and current data that help you prioritize and successfully track people down and collect. Keep your skip tracing and debt recovery efficient and effective! Contact us to find out about our 90 Day Try Us Program. Call 800-884-4397 or visit www.microbilt.com.

GETTING TO KNOW MICHAEL O’MEARA OF THE O’MEARA LAW OFFICE

• A lawyer who has thousands of lines of poetry memorized and who thinks he would want to be a gym teacher if he wasn’t in the ARM industry — if those aren’t signs that Michael O’Meara is interesting to be around, then nothing is. O’Meara has been in the industry so long, even the way in which he got his job is pretty much obsolete by now. Read on to learn more about Michael and how he thinks being a former agency owner has affected his outlook now that he is an attorney.

JUDGE CERTIFIES CLASS, GIVES DEFENSE 14 DAYS TO FIGHT SUMMARY JUDGMENT IN FDCPA LETTER CASE

• A debt collector suffered the triple whammy of having a summary judgment only partially denied, the plaintiff’s class certification granted, and the judge giving the collector 14 days to show cause why the plaintiff should not be granted summary judgment, in a case in which the collector did exactly what its client asked the collector to do.

LAWSUIT TOTALS KEEP FALLING FOR FDCPA, TCPA, WHILE FCRA SUITS KEEP INCREASING: WEBRECON

• The number of lawsuits filed that allege violations of consumer protection statutes — the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act — all dropped in December, compared with a month earlier, and for the FDCPA and TCPA, it summed up how much of 2018 went overall, according to data released yesterday by WebRecon.

DEFENDANT RAISES CONSTITUTION QUESTIONS OVER TCPA APPLICABILITY

• A federal judge in Nevada is giving the Attorney General of the United States 60 days to decide whether it was to intervene in a case in which the constitutionality of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act is being called into question.

NUMBER OF AMERICANS WITHOUT HEALTH INSURANCE KEEPS CLIMBING

• The number of Americans without health insurance continued to climb in 2018, and has increased by nearly 30% in the past two years.

WORTH NOTING: Federal courts are now feeling the sting of the government shutdown … An apartment in New York has sold for $238 million … Which fried foods are the worst for you … Some of the prop bets available for Super Bowl LIII … The areas of the United States most likely to be impacted by automation … Spotting phishing emails is getting harder and harder … The spy inside your car … There won’t be any candy hearts this Valentine’s Day … It’s pretty hot in Australia these days … How to train your brain to be more positive.

A foldable phone

Places to add to your bucket list

The Daily Digest is sponsored by Microbilt. Designed to help debt collection professionals, MicroBilt’s platform of recovery and skip tracing tools provide quick, convenient, and current data that help you prioritize and successfully track people down and collect. Keep your skip tracing and debt recovery efficient and effective! Contact us to find out about our 90 Day Try Us Program. Call 800-884-4397 or visit www.microbilt.com.