Lambert Strether, the founder of the liberal blog Corrente Wire, has suggested that my story on the woman who sued the debt collector might be a hoax:
The story (cross-posted here) is sourced to a phone interview with the woman's lawyer, Ross Teter. The best I can find in a quick search is this court docket item. I would want to make very, very certain that this story isn't really a way of propagating links to the "credit repair" services and forums, whose links appear further down in the article.
The name of the plaintiff, "Chrystal A. Snow", appears only here in Google news.
I tried to post a comment there but new accounts require administrative approval.
I confirmed the existence of the lawsuit by calling Dallas County Court-at-Law No. 4 and got the details of the judgment in a phone interview with Chrystal A. Snow's attorney Ross Teter. The case number is 08-05810-D for anyone who'd like to track it down.
The reason Strether could not find independent corroboration of the story by searching Google News is because the case has not received any media attention. There's only one blog that found it before I did: The law offices of Dean Malone in Dallas covered the suit last November and published a scan of 16 pages from the jury findings.
I do not have any relationship with the credit repair expert quoted in the article. I found her through the large number of messages on her online forum about lawsuits filed by Midland Funding LLC.