Yet again, the industry is punished for the gaps left by statutes and regulations. Only a handful of jurisdictions provide a verbatim safe harbor disclosure to use when collecting on debts that are beyond the statute of limitations, meaning that the creditor can no longer recover the debt through a lawsuit. For states like Illinois that do not provide a safe harbor disclosure, agencies and their legal counsel must use their best judgment to come up with an appropriate disclosure. Unfortunately, this lack of clarity leads to hyper-technical lawsuits on letter wording where agencies are at the courts’ mercy, hoping their disclosure passes muster.
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