Normally, after a plaintiff wins his TCPA lawsuit seeking statutory damages and obtains a judgment against the defendant, he then becomes a judgment creditor. For the judgment creditor, discovery can be a powerful tool in his execution or enforcement of the judgment. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure allows the judgement creditor to obtain discovery from any person, including but not limited to the judgment debtor.

In this case, the court issued an order awarding the plaintiff $22,287 for the defendant’s violations of the FDCPA, TCPA, and the Ohio consumer Sales Practices Act. See Miller v. Ability Recovery Servs. 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95330 (S.D. Ohio, June 1, 2020). In executing the judgment, the plaintiff served post-judgment discovery requests to seek information regarding the existence and whereabouts of the defendant’s assets. Unfortunately, the defendant, instead of adopting a strategy that can get itself out of the debtor’s position in the best way, chose the worst strategy a defendant may ever want to adopt, whether in pre-litigation, litigation, or post-litigation. The defendant completely ignored the requests with no response and no objections.

Unsurprisingly, the court granted the plaintiff’s motion to compel the post-judgment discovery and also allowed the plaintiff to file a motion to seek attorneys’ fees incurred in bringing the motion to compel.

Well, I understand that the post-judgment discovery is nothing fun for a judgment debtor due to its scarily broad scope, but turning your head away from a problem certainly does nothing to get rid of the problem, and same thing here in the TCPAWorld. Stay safe, everyone, and be proactive if you have a TCPA issue.