So you have just gotten your complaint in the mail and have read it. What do you do now?
Well if you are in Lehigh County, the smartest move is to call 610-928-1233 or email jim@padebt911.com and schedule an appointment, after all, why go to the courthouse in Allentown unprepared, but what if you decide you want to go it alone?
Again, I cannot stress how bad of an idea this is, but if you insist, your next step is preliminary objections… maybe.
Here’s why I say maybe.
Even if you have something that you can legitimately object to, sometimes strategically it makes more sense to let it go knowing you can use it against the opposing side later on in the lawsuit. After a while, you get to know your unfriendly neighborhood debt buyer or credit card plaintiff and you get to know what mistakes they make (more on that later).
So what is a preliminary objection? A preliminary objection is a complaint that there is a defect on the complaint that makes it difficult or even impossible to answer.
We are blessed and cursed in Pennsylvania that there are only a few preliminary objections that you can bring. Of them, the objections I most commonly bring are insufficiency of pleading (PA 5.101(a)(3)) and lack of capacity to sue (PA 5.101(a)(5)).
Often times I will see a complaint missing key information, like the original creditor. How on earth is a Defendant going to even know if the debt is valid if they don’t know who the original creditor was? Other times, the Plaintiff will identify itself as something like Equity Credit IV, LLC. I haven’t seen an Equity Credit IV, LLC credit card, have you? If the creditor fails to properly identify itself, how can you know if they have standing to sue?
There are other preliminary objections and at this point, I have used them all.
So if I file preliminary objections, do I need to file an answer? Usually no, but in some cases yes, which is why you really want an attorney to help you with this. Think of it like this, you could take your own appendix out if you wanted to and avoid medical costs, but that doesn’t make it a good idea.
So when should you not use preliminary objections?
I don’t use them when I can ambush (legally of course) a Plaintiff at an arbitration hearing. The dirty little secret about debt lawsuits is that most of them are won by default and if your attorney can fight his or her way out of a wet paper bag, you have a good chance of winning. At the same time, if you go pro se (represent yourself) the Plaintiff’s firm is going to give your preliminary objection and and other documents an anal exam (wow more medical terminology today) and file objections and answers to every mistake you make. Like it or not, those mistakes will weigh heavily in the mind of the judge or the arbitrators who will ultimately decide if you are on the hook for $5,000, $10,000, or as much as $50,000 (Lehigh County Arbitration limit).
What debt buyers do is they hire appearance attorneys to show up. They usually pay $75 a hearing (at least they did in 2007, I hope they’ve gotten a raise, especially if they have to deal with lovable sharks like me) and they come with a statements. What they don’t normally come with is a document assigning title of the debt to them. If they have it, it is almost always invalid for one reason or another. The appearance attorney usually has no clue, and I will complain that the statement is hearsay, but once in a while they will use Rule 803(6) which is the Records of Regularly Conducted Activity exception to the hearsay rule. Even if they get the statement in, there are probably four or five holes I can put into it.
So what exactly are preliminary objections?
Preliminary objections are optional objections made to the complaint in one filing (you must file them all at once) that the Defendant is responsible for, are not required, and are sometimes not in your best interest to file.
Confused yet? No, good. If you have kept up, you have probably realized that you might be getting yourself in over your head with them and you need a lawyer to help you, and if you haven’t kept up, then you are already in over your head and need to call a lawyer now.
Once last thing, you only get one shot at this, but even that has a fail-safe. If within 20 days you file amended preliminary objections, you can correct them, but even that can be challenged.
A lawsuit is like a game of baseball. There are rules. You must follow those rules and if you don’t follow them, you will lose. If you play poorly, you will lose. This could potentially cost you tens of thousands of dollars and years of frustration, you owe it to yourself to have a free 
consultation with me, if for nothing else than to set your mind at ease. So give me a call at 610-928-1233 or send me an email at jim@padebt911.com and we can discuss bringing in a really big bat to play for your team.
While I am a Mets fan, I realized that many Phillie fans read this blog and I decided to give equal time despite the hammer and nail relationship the Phillies have had with the Mets lately, I’ll gladly assist a Phillie fan as well. In fact one of my recent clients named his sons Cole and Chase. I’m an equal opportunity attorney for Met and Phillie fans, and fans of any team or none at all.