Posted on 02/10/2020 10:21:51 AM PST by C19fan
Why limit the choice? Is there any actual reason to prevent it? Your reasoning here is akin to "you don't need a gun b/c we have cops."
Correct. If you have a court date, don’t tell the court to pix off.
If this virus gets really bad, no one in their right mind would allow themselves to be taken into a death camp like a prison. Some people will go down swinging instead of dying in a death camp.
“In California they are called “orders of examination”. You can take the debtor’s watch off his wrist, empty his wallet, and drive home in his car while he goes home on the bus.”
So show up without a watch, carry only a driver’s license in your wallet, and park a few blocks away. Hide your keys before you walk in.
The Pro Publica story was exhaustive in details. It gave the debtors/arrestee side in detail. Then they spoke to the judge, the lawyers, the ambulance company, the hospital, in same level of depth. And it gave a general overview of debt collection law, and how the judge came to be on the bench, who he is and his views in his own words.
It was far better than most as far as detail.
Too poor to afford private health insurance and too rich to afford Medicaid.
Which puts a lot of middle class families in a bind. Hence these cases.
Yep. While illegal aliens aren’t even ASKED about insurance or paying at my local ER. Seen it several times.
So many articles, so little time.
Of course the headline has it wrong: They’re going to jail for contempt for disobeying an order to appear in court.
That said, ordering a debtor to appear in court every other month to swear he is too poor to pay the debt seems pretty bizarre, and I’ve never heard about anything like this in any other jurisdiction. Like pretty much every news article discussing legal issues, this article is so thin on details it is impossible to figure out exactly what is being described. Have they just been sued on the debt or is there already a judgment against them? Is there some statute or rule in Kansas authorizing these “debt collection days”? If they’re insolvent, why don’t any of these debtors file for bankruptcy? Or, if they have non-exempt assets that they wouldn’t want to lose in bankruptcy, why don’t the creditors simply have the sheriff levy on those assets like any other judgment creditor?
Conducting a brief search of Kansas law, I can’t find anything in Kansas law that authorizes something like this. The only reference I can find to an oath of poverty is the same sort of “pauper’s oath” most states allow a plaintiff to file in lieu of paying filing fees. The only scenario I can think of where that would come into play is that the creditor sued the debtors in small claims court and won, and then the debtors filed an appeal to the district court and a “pauper’s oath” affidavit to avoid paying the filing fee, and the judge is ordering them in every month to re-affirm that oath for some reason. But if that’s the case, why wouldn’t the judge just dismiss the appeal rather than hold them in contempt? And what kind of trial judge has enough time on his hands to hold a “debt collection” cattle call docket every month?
If there’s someone knowledgeable about Kansas law who can explain this, I’d be interested.
Are there no prisons? Are there no poor houses? Charles Dickens—Unrelated to “Little Jimmy”.
Probably the “judge” has no clue about Kansas law other than what he has been told by the sleazebag. None of the defendants have enough money to contest any of this crap to a higher authority. It’s abuse of the system, pure and simple. Wouldn’t surprise me if the “judge” was on the take.
But that’s a boring story.
Not when you charge by the hour! :-)
If you like your prison, you can keep your prison.
Propublica is a left wing organization. I expect that much has been left out of this story, despite my agreement that medical costs are out of control.
Yep, show your competitive prices, AND the differences in “where”, “who”, and “what”. Break pricing collusion in everything.
Why don’t they just set up a Medical Loan low interest, and make 1 payment out of many at a rate people can afford?
The original article was written back in October of 2019. Why all the traction now? It sucks to be in debt, but I am suspicious of the re-release of the article...
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