Missouri Judgment Collector’s Filings Not Practice of Law

A “judgment enforcement firm” and its owner are off the hook in a proposed class action alleging the owner engaged in the unauthorized practice of law when requesting the garnishment of wages and bank accounts, the Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed.

But the would-be class lawsuit wasn’t frivolous, the court said, affirming that J&M Securities LLC shouldn’t get attorneys’ fees for having to defend the case.

J&M Securities isn’t a law firm, and Shannon Metzger, its owner, isn’t a lawyer, according to the court. Metzger filed J&M’s garnishment application forms and interrogatories in court in an effort to collect on unpaid-rent judgments against Velma Mitchell, Tanisha Winston, and Kayla Sanders. J&M had obtained the default and consent judgments by assignment or in other ways.

Mitchell, Winston, and Sanders sued the collection firm and Metzger on behalf of a proposed class of hundreds of Missouri residents whose wages or bank accounts J&M sought to garnish.

Only a licensed Missouri attorney could “submit court filings” on J&M’s behalf, and as a limited liability company, it could not do so itself, they allege, arguing Metzger and J&M engaged in the unauthorized practice of law.

The trial court dismissed the suit, saying a 1997 Missouri Court of Appeals precedent controlled the issue. It declined to award attorneys’ fees to the defendants, however.

The appeals court said that in the intervening years since that ruling, a pre-printed form has become the vehicle for such garnishment requests, and the earlier case didn’t address filing interrogatories, the appeals court said.

Nonetheless, “No legal skill, knowledge or discretion was required to fill in any of the information required by either of these forms—only a basic ability to put factual information into the correct box,” it said.

Mitchell, Winston, and Sanders, in arguing the precedent doesn’t apply, presented a nonfrivolous case and shouldn’t be sanctioned, Judge Robert G. Dowd Jr. said.

Judges Robert M. Clayton III and Roy L. Richter also served on the panel.

Butsch Roberts & Assocs. LLC represented the plaintiffs.

Frankel Rubin Klein Siegel Payne & Pudlowski PC represented the defendants.

The case is Mitchell v. J&M Sec., LLC, 2019 BL 404866, Mo. Ct. App. E.D., No. ED107431, 10/22/19.