DBA International Responds to NYS Proposed
Court Rules & Affidavits

DBA International submitted formal comments to the New York State Unified Court System’s proposed court rules and affidavits on May 30, 2014. DBA previously highlighted this issue with the DBA membership in a May 22, 2014 Member Alert requesting DBA members to submit comments to the proposed rules. We would like to thank all of our members who submitted comments on the proposed rules and affidavits as each letter helped strengthen the collective industry response. As a result of the depth and value of our submitted comments and others, the June 15th implementation date will be delayed, pursuant to a New York Law Journal published today.

DBA’s comments totaled 253 pages, which included 10 appendices designed to strengthen and support our position. The main points can be summarized as follows:

  • While DBA supports enhanced consumer protections and would like to be able to support the court’s reform efforts, we cannot support the proposed rules and affidavits as currently drafted due to the severe harm they would create for the business community.
  • DBA encouraged the delay of the proposed rules, originally noted to take effect June 15, 2014, to allow all of the interested parties to sit down and develop reasonable and balanced rules which would promote the legitimate interests of the consumer community who wish to have additional information to either verify or dispute a claim AND the business community who seek to collect on a legitimately owed contractual obligation.
  • We identified overarching concerns with the proposed rules and affidavits and provided detailed explanations that supported those concerns. These concerns, included:
    • Account-Level Affidavits
    • Original Account Documents from the Establishment of the Account
    • Pre-Charge-Off Itemization
    • Retroactive Application
    • Harm to the Consumer

DBA’s comments have been placed on the DBA website and can be viewed here.

We must now wait to see what impact our responses had in convincing the New York Unified Court System to seek an alternative approach. We were successful in delaying the implementation date which was originally identified as June 15, 2004. DBA will keep an eye on any developments and will inform the membership when we have news to report.

If you wish to see all of the responses received by the Unified Court System, they have been made public and can be viewed here.

June 13, 2014