“A VERY PROFESSIONAL JOB”: Credit One’s Counsel Commended By Federal Court as Plaintiff Accused of Manufacturing Case Has to Pay Another $73k

So I sometimes take some heat for calling out bad lawyering out there. Unlike most attorney bloggers–who are probably afraid their own poor lawyering might one day come under scrutiny–I pull no (or at least few) punches when it comes to pointing out the mistakes that some lawyers make in either pursuing or defending TCPA cases. Some folks really don’t like that. But… that’s life.

Either way though it is only fair that when a lawyer does something really special in a TCPA case that they receive a little praise and admiration–I try to be even handed.

So my hat is off to Credit One’s lawyers for the great work they did in the Lieberman case. Its not every day that a federal judge heaps praise on a defense attorney:

The Court finds that the counsel for Credit One did a very professional job in this case, successfully arguing against the Liebermans’ opposition and obtaining judgment.

Now “very professional job” might not sound like high praise but federal judges generally do not characterize the lawyering before them in positive terms, so this is a real compliment.

And it seems well deserved. They really made this Lieberman fellow pay for (allegedly) setting up a TCPA suit, and that’s just the sort of thing I like to see.

I covered the background on the award here and the apparent scheme to manufacture lawsuits here.

So catching everyone up, Credit One sought to recover its attorneys fees and costs incurred in defending the arbitration on a theory that indemnity was owed for failing to provide a valid phone number. The arbitrator agreed and awarded $286,064.62

Credit One’s lawyers then successfully defended the award against the Plaintiff’s challenge to it in federal court. That was the story I covered previously.

And then–I love this–Credit One’s lawyers went back to court and asked the federal judge to award fees for the work they had done in federal court as well.

Crediting the findings the arbitrator had made below, the federal court ALSO granted Credit One its fees–heaping an additional $73,884.07 on top of the already massive arbitration award.

So the total judgment to be entered AGAINST the consumer who allegedly received 600 robocalls?

$359,948.69

Severed head, meet post.

Wow. Just wow.

There’s been some mighty fine results in TCPAWorld–I have a handful of arguably the greatest of all time–but this one is certainly up there.

I am extremely impressed with Credit One and their lawyers for delivering this great result.

And let this be a very public warning to anyone out there who is thinking of engaging in those sort of fraudulent behavior. There is no place for fraud or manufactured lawsuits in TCPAWorld. Someone will make you pay for it–and maybe not even me!

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