Nevada Collection Agency Remains Embroiled in HOA Bruhaha

http://www.insidearm.com/news/00001936-nevada-collection-agency-remains-embroile/

Read past coverage of our generation’s Watergate (only, you know, with no wiretapping or Haldeman or a president stepping down in disgrace or Pat Nixon looking RADIANT in yellow) (so basically, not our generation’s Watergate at all) here:

1) HOA Fee Debt Collection Imbroglio Leads to Litigation…for All

2) HOA Debt Collection II: The HOA-ening

The on-again off-again Sam-and-Diane-iness of the current Nevada Homeowners vs. (Nevada Homeowner’s Association + Nevada Collection Agencies) is, for now, back on.

The collection agency, Nevada Association Services (NAS), had hoped its motion for dismissal would sail through the courts and get it out of dutch with the law. Previously, the agency had been accused of violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) in pursuing debts owed by Nevada homeowners — specifically, “coercing homeowners into paying inflated collection fees with phony legal documents and false threats to foreclose on their homes” according to a story running on the website VegasInc.com. The homeowners are in dutch, too, for engaging the collection agency in the first place.

Additionally, earlier, NAS had tried to sue one pair of lawyers for the HOA, the brother and sister duo of Rutt and Puoy Premsrirut. NAs alleged that the Siblings Premsrirut (but specifically sister Puoy) filed the suit “in an ongoing scheme of forum, plaintiff and claim shopping with no purpose other than to harass defendants NAS and [NAS president] Mr. [David] Stone.”

T…hat didn’t work out so well for NAS. As the VegasInc.com story points out, a state judge threw out the case, stating that NAS was on the wrong end of the stick in the matter: “It was the collection agencies that were trying to use the court system to violate the free speech rights of the Premsriruts.”

But the original case — the one NAS hoped would be thrown out — will continue. The tiniest ray of sunshine: it’s unlikely, according to U.S. District Judge James Mahan (who threw out the dismissal), that the case will be allowed to become a class action.