Credit Card Lawsuit: The Discovery Phase

Once you are dealing with a credit card lawsuit and you came to a point where you want to ask the plaintiff for documents, you are on the Discovery process of the lawsuit. Basically, you will be asked by the plaintiff to send over several documents or answer a set of questions in the Interrogatories. Once you filled the necessary documents then it’s the plaintiff’s turn to answer questions and produce documents. 

To start off the discovery process, you need to request documents from the opposing attorney. If the lawyer or the law firm has yet to respond to your request, you are allowed to send a letter Certified Mail that tells them that they have not produced the necessary documents or filed their Answer within the given timeframe by the court. Give the lawyer a date to get discovery back to you.

If the attorney or the law firm ignores this request, you can file a motion to Compel with your court. You will need to present a copy of the Certified Mail receipt showing that you notified the other party of the Discovery and they failed to do so on time.

If the other party still ignores the request even after you filed a motion to Compel during the credit card lawsuit proceedings, it is within your rights to make the court help you in getting the necessary paperwork that pertains to the credit card lawsuit. All you need to do is present evidence that repeatedly, the plaintiff has ignored your request for documents. Send copies of the evidence to the court via Certified Mail receipt.

Once the court receives the necessary documents, they will order the plaintiff to produce the necessary documents pertaining to credit card lawsuit on a given date. If the plaintiff did not provide the necessary details on time, they could lose the credit card lawsuit against you.

The Discovery phase is one of the most important part of the court proceedings. You have to be careful, in terms of answering the interrogatories because creditors are known to use trick questions to get you to admit that you own the credit card account and the debt under it. It’s critical to review your answer and re-review it again before you file the documents in court. Finally, from drafting an Answer to the complaint to filing answer to Interrogatories, make sure you file all necessary documents on time.