Palisades Collection, LLC

“Notably, the most common plaintiff, Palisades Collection, LLC, claims to have purchased a large portfolio of defaulted debt from AT&T Wireless when that company merged with Cingular in 2004.

It is not surprising then that in the plurality of lawsuits, the alleged debt had been incurred with AT&T Wireless.

In fact, among cases reviewed in this study, alleged AT&T Wireless accounts were the basis of 43.7% of consumer credit cases brought by a third-party debt buyer and 39.0% of all of the files reviewed.

Interestingly, in September 2006, five individuals who had been sued by Palisades Collection, LLC for alleged AT&T Wireless debts in New York City Civil Court sued Palisades and its law firm, Pressler and Pressler, LLP, in federal court for violations of the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1692 et seq.69

In particular, the five alleged that Palisades sued them without having made any effort to determine whether it had any basis to do so.

Furthermore, they alleged that Palisades’ complaints were patently untrue and that any materials provided in support of the underlying cases against the defendants constituted inadmissible hearsay and could not be used to support the plaintiff’s original claims.

In other words, the five alleged that Palisades Collection, LLC and Pressler and Pressler initiated lawsuits against alleged debtors knowing that they could not, if required to do so, prove the elements of their claims.”

“Debt Weight: The Consumer Credit Crisis in New York City and its Impact on the Working Poor” a report by the Community Development Project, November 2007