Federal Judge Sanctions Pittsburgh Law Firm for Writing ‘Imaginary’ Letters on Behalf of Clients in Debt Disputes

A Pennsylvania federal judge has imposed sanctions and lambasted a law firm and its attorneys for having employees write falsified letters on behalf of clients involved in debt collection disputes.

Attorneys Travis Andrew Gordon, and Joshua P. Ward, and their firm, J.P. Ward & Associates, LLC, filed two suits suit on behalf of clients disputing debts. The suits were filed against Portfolio Recovery Associates LLC and accused the company of FDCPA violations. U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon explained the plaintiffs’ attorneys then “tasked themselves with drafting ‘dispute letter’ scripts on behalf of debtors, their putative clients” and “[m]ost of the script’s contents, including the passages at the beginning and the end, were a stream-of-conscience spilling of non-sequiturs and random musings.”  The letters did not dispute that the money was owed, but rather whether they owed money to the company seeking to collect the debt. “The weirdly worded and oddly specific scripts were handwritten by firm staff, client-by-client, one by one,” she wrote.

The attorneys freely admitted drafting the letters, contending that their clients gave them permission to write the letters. Bissoon commented that “[i]t is hard to say which was more jarring — the conduct itself, or counsel’s breezy admission, bereft of self-awareness or concern.”

Bissoon ordered that the attorneys pay all of the defendant’s fees, expenses and costs. In addition, she ordered the attorneys to write letters apologizing to the people on whose behalf the attorney had written letters. Finally, she ordered that her memorandum outlining the attorneys’ misdeeds be attached to any debt defense and consumer protection cases filed in her court by the firms.