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Debt suits and JPMorgan Chase: a recommended ProPublic article

I recommend Patrick Rucker’s new article on ProPublica entitled A Return to Robo-Signing: JPMorgan Chase Has Unleased a Lawsuit Blitz on Credit Card Customers to anyone interested in debt suits.

          JPMorgan stopped filing suits against consumers in 2011 and resumed in 2020. In 2021 JPMorgan filed thousands of lawsuits against Texans and the article explains what they can expect:

          “In Texas a decade ago, lawmakers pushed most credit card cases into the state’s version of small claims courts, known as justice courts. The rules of evidence are more lax there and the judge might not even be a lawyer. A retired basketball player presides over one such courtroom in Houston. “One of these judges said to me: ‘What’s the point of seeing a bunch of evidence? We already know these people borrowed the money,’” said Jarzombek, the Fort Worth attorney. “I said: ‘Why even have a trial, then? Let the banks take whatever they want.’””

          Since September 2020, Texas justice courts can hear cases involving up to $20,000 making “small claims court” a somewhat misleading label.

          In 2021, JPMorgan sued about 300 consumers in justice court over a credit card debt. In 2020 they sued just one.