I was giving a deposition a few years ago when I sued my mortgage holder, SunTrust bank. I had gone through a Chapter 7 bankruptcy and it had been discharged. There was a court order, so they weren’t allowed to do anything to collect the debt. All they were permitted to do was foreclose on the house.
Here is the problem- it turned out that they were NOT the mortgage holder. They had lied to the bankruptcy court. They tried all sorts of tactics- they forged a note. They lied to the court. None of that worked, and they were unable to foreclose on the house. So they resorted to sending collection agents to my house, and calling me repeatedly on the phone. I wound up suing them 5 times in 4 years and collecting more than $40,000 in damages. They still kept it up, with a collector calling me a deadbeat who doesn’t pay his bills, so I sued them again.
So that’s how we wound up in the deposition. I brought my attorney. One part of the deposition went like this:
Divemedic: I have a tape of your client’s collectors harassing me on the phone and calling me a deadbeat
SunTrust Lawyer: Did you ever think, even once, that if you paid your bills, the calls and visits would stop?
DM: Are you telling me that you and your client are knowingly violating the orders of the Federal Bankruptcy court to collect this debt in violation of Federal Law?
STL (to the court reporter): Stop recording this. This is off the record. (To my attorney): You need to remind your client that I am an officer of the court, and he needs to be civil, or we will ask for contempt charges.
My Lawyer: (to me) You heard her. You have to be civil.
DM: (to my lawyer) This is still off the record, right?
My Lawyer: Yes.
DM (To STL): Kiss my ass.
The SunTrust lawyer came unglued and ended the deposition at that point. On the way out, my lawyer told me that my comment was the funniest thing he ever heard at a deposition. We wound up settling the lawsuit for five figures, but I can’t comment on how much because of an NDA. That was almost ten years ago, and I still laugh about it.
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