Federal judge spanks collection agency
- Peter Schneider
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 21 hours ago
I ran across a great case I had to share Ladunskiy v. Anderson & Assocs. Credit Servs., LLC, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 116636, 2025 LX 106701 not just because the plaintiffs got justice against an abusive collection agency, but they recovered damages for the emotional stress the collection agency caused.
The Ladunskiy complaint quickly sums up the facts. Anderson & Associates Credit Services, LLC garnished the wrong people, and in true collection agency fashion, refused to rectify the situation when they found out.
4. In July 2023, Plaintiffs were going about their lives when they received notification from their bank that their account had been depleted by $1,296.74 in connection with a garnishment proceeding.
5. This was extremely concerning to Plaintiffs, who were unaware of any creditors and who were not in a position to simply lose this amount of money.
6. Upon some investigation, Plaintiffs learned that the garnishment was issued in connection with a judgment entered in an Oregon Circuit Court civil matter, Multnomah County no. 23SC13686 (“the Judgment”).
7. That case, however, was captioned Anderson & Associates Credit Services, LLC v. Lyudmila Ryabchuk and Nikolay Ryabchuk, and the named defendants were identified as living in Portland, Oregon. Meanwhile, Plaintiffs, who reside in Washington State, are obviously not the same people as those who were parties to the aforementioned Oregon case.
8. Plaintiffs have no idea how this could have happened; they have been married for over 25 years and were not a party to any lawsuit. Plaintiffs contacted their bank, but were met with difficulty due to the bank’s observance of federal regulations.
9. Plaintiffs then contacted the debt collector, A&A, both by phone and by email. Again, Plaintiffs were not able to get anyone to listen to what had happened, much less return their money.
10. Asa result, in August 2023, Plaintiffs sent a letter to A&A specifically explaining that their names differed from those listed in the Judgment, their address differed, and that they were simply not the parties to the Oregon Judgment. Accordingly, Plaintiffs asked A&A to inform their bank of these events and to return their money.
11. To their dismay, on September 12, 2023, A&A sent a letter back to Plaintiffs — correctly addressed to Ms. Ladunskiy (her actual name) and sent to her actual address in Washington State, thus making it crystal clear who was being discussed — wherein A&A stated “it appears to [the undersigned] that we garnished the correct person.” A copy of this letter is attached as Exhibit A. Adding insult to injury, A&A attached a “challenge to garnishment” form, which was pointless because the Ladunskiys were not parties to the Oregon case and could not file documents in another person’s case, and furthermore, it is not incumbent on the Ladunskiys to intervene into an Oregon case (at the expense of their own time and resources) just to obtain the money wrongfully taken from their bank account.
12. Through today’s date, A&A has maintained that Plaintiffs are the “correct” parties to the Judgment and that the garnishment was justified. No refund has been issued and no apologies have been made.
13. As often occurs with individuals who do not have a wealth of resources, Plaintiffs were placed in a quandary — their money had been, essentially, stolen, but the time and effort it would take to recover their funds would take them both away from their employment (assuming it could even be done). Accordingly, Plaintiffs sought counsel.
14. As a result of Defendants’ actions detailed above, Plaintiff has incurred expenses in seeking and retaining counsel in connection with ascertaining her legal rights and
responsibilities, and has suffered financial uncertainty, unease, and distress caused by Defendants’ tactics and communications, which are false, misleading, improper, and/or confusing.
Anderson & Associates Credit Services, LLC then made their second mistake, they hired clown attorney Robert E. Sabido. Why do I say clown attorney?
Plaintiffs identified six requests for admission which had been served on Defendant A&A in April 2024. Pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 36(a)(3), these requests are deemed admitted by virtue of A&A’s failure to respond.
Robert E. Sabido was their attorney through the end of May, 2024.
So Mr. Sabido let his client fail to respond to requests for admission and they were deemed admitted. Anderson & Associates Credit Services, LLC went on to be held in default.
And the judge came down on Anderson & Associates Credit Services, LLC like a ton of bricks., not only giving the Ladunskiys' their money back,, and $1,000 in statutory FDCPA damages, but $10,000 to Mrs. Ladunskiys for emotional distress damages and $5,000 to Mr. Ladunskiys for emotion distress damages.
The judge then trebled their actual damages under the CPA
Based on the facts and circumstances in this case, treble damages are appropriate in pursuant to RCW 19.86.090 to deter and punish defendant from further violations. Mason v. Mortg. Am., Inc., 114 Wn. 2d 842, 855, 792 P.2d 142 (1990). This is especially so given the fact that Defendant was given multiple opportunities to return Plaintiffs' money, but instead continued to defiantly claim that Plaintiffs owed money. The amount of damages subject to trebling are, as stated above, $80.00 for expenses in seeking legal advice, plus $275.00 in missed work, plus $1,296.74 in the wrongful garnishment, which is hereby trebled to a total of $ 4,955.22.
And awarded them reasonable attorney fees [no motion has been submitted for that, but I think it is safe to assume they will be North of $20k.] All told the Court awarded the Ladunskiys' over $20k for the bone headed collection agency stealing $1,296.74. Hopefully Anderson & Associates Credit Services, LLC learns the consequences of a garnishing the wrong person.
A nice element of the judgment was rolling in money for parking and gas under the CPA.
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Note: The opinions in this blog are mine (Peter Schneider) and do not count as legal advice. If you're thinking of suing over illegal robocalls or Do Not Call list violations, contact me for a legal consultation.
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