Lisbon, Maine FOAA Costs and Fee Waiver problems, suggested solutions‏

July 20, 2014

Dear Readers:

After reading the posts by Mr. Fillmore and other residents of Lisbon about the Town Attorney’s “legal opinion” about who qualifies for a fee waiver for Maine FOAA requests, I posted a statement that the Town Attorney does not understand 1) recent developments in information law, and 2) the town attorney does not understand the search and copying capacity of computers or he would realize the costs the town calculates for searching and retrieving and making electronic copies of the requested information are outlandish. 

Reading the town attorney’s “legal opinion” makes me wonder how an attorney can bill the town for any professional legal services for his “opinion” that is without facts and without cites (verifiable references) to the relevant governing laws of Maine and the United States.  The residents of Maine need to know what facts and laws the town attorney uses to support his “legal opinion,” if any. By failing to provide any objective measures, based on research methods recognized and accepted by the Maine and Federal courts to support his “legal opinion”, the residents of Maine are forced to accept that Aristotelian logic and argument is alive and well in Maine, and forced to pay good money for “legal opinions” that are not just in error but cross over into the realms of incompetent counsel and simple fraud.  Sham “Legal opinions”  are a harmful insult to the people who pay for such shoddy work and an insult to all those attorneys who burn the midnight oil, if necessary, to gather appropriate support for their advice to corporate and local government’s managers.

So, rather than just harangue the poor attorney into taking some remedial law courses, or hiring a researcher to do the required work for a true legal opinion that shows he earned his fees, I'm going to write about my recent experience with the Honorable Eric Wright, Esq., Staff Attorney, Bureau of Consumer Credit Protection, Department of Professional and Financial Regulation, State of Maine, along with relevant documents attached as PDFs. In fact, Mr. Wright showed excellent legal skills in a timely manner in dealing with an aberrant debt collection agency that made almost as many errors as did Lisbon’s town attorney.  Mr. Wright is clearly qualified to be awarded an official, true replica of the Maine Dove. 

 

   A-Mystery of the Andersonville Dove - Andersonville National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service)

So, should you experience any problems with a fact- and legal-challenged debt collection agency, you will have a good idea of who to contact in Maine and D.C., and what a solid legal opinion should at least look like and what it should accomplish.

First, I received a bill for supposed money due on a medical exam taken years ago.  The bill was from a debt collection agency different from the one that tried to collect money years ago for the same false claim.  I immediately replied to them and wrote the Maine Attorney General to let them know what was happening. 

   1CtechComplainttoMaineAttorneyGeneral 6-14-14 PETscan

. I figured the Attorney General would have a database of companies that were not getting their facts straight.  There is no such database but the Office of the Maine Attorney General responded quickly telling me that they had forwarded my complaint to the Bureau of Consumer Credit Protection. Within a day of that letter, I received a phone call from Mr. Wright, who had read my complaint and needed more details.  

I felt odd answering questions from someone who worked for a State of Maine Bureau that was unknown to me.  As Mr. Wright asked me questions, good pithy questions, I realized the specific answers he would craft into a fact-based, law-defined position to sculpt the best approach to resolving my problem.  After the phone call ended, I figured he had gone through the motions and i’d not hear from him again.   

I was wrong.  Within a few days, Mr. Wright sent me a soild legal opinion of the State on my position that not only referenced Maine statutes but how those statute applied to this case.  Mr. Wright’s letter was the nicest “cease and desist” letter I’ve ever read.

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  Responding to Mr. Wright’s letter, the debt collection agency sent me a letter withdrawing from their claim,

   3 CtechWithdrawalfromBill 7-10-14recToday

.  A few days later, Mr. Wright sent another letter that clarified his original legal opinion and even identified how we needed to tweak the present laws to improve them. 

   4 WrighttoMe CtechHines 7-14-14Gmail Complaint No. 20373

In the meantime, I felt so ignorant of what was going on, I started googling.  The feds do have a database, rather extensive, about financial complaints that includes debt collections. 

   5-CFPA-7-20-14-complaintsconsumer

  I downloaded the entire CFPB database and searched to see if my errant debt collector had complaints filed.  They had a few.

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On a googling roll, I searched to see if there were court cases against the debt collector.  There was.  A fat juicy class-action suit. 

   7gov.uscourts.nyed.356512.1.0

  I contacted the attorney for the case and asked to join.  It looks good and even though the debt collector is going to leave me alone, they need to be held accountable for their actions so they don’t cause more harms to people who are vulnerable.  The problem of errant debt collectors has grown to the point where ProPublica (an investigative reporting group) is conducting a special study and wants you to contact them if debt collectors are giving you grief.

   8-Have You Ever Been Sued Over a Debt Help ProPublica Investigate Collection Practices - ProPublica

So, please know that you have an incredible number of different methods to protect yourself and your finances in our system of justice.  Be aware that legal innumeracy is a recognized weakness in some lawyers

   9 FightingLegallInnumeracy 2014v17n3 Articles Cheng

, but Maine has an excellent law that allows you to obtain financing for lawsuits, so you don’t have to hire someone like the Lisbon Town Attorney.

   10 FinanceLitigationThirdParty Economics 5 2014 Copy

Know for sure that I am not an attorney, and I have doubts about some  of those who claim they are, but have lost their common sense. I hope my experiences help you as you work for access to information you’ve already paid for, to better understand your government and discover how to increase efficiencies.

Dwight Hines