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Damage to Your Credit Rating Is a Personal Injury

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Fullerton, CAIf your credit rating has been damaged because of someone else's actions—it's as if you sustained a personal injury. It's an injury to your reputation and it can compromise your lifestyle just as much as losing an eye or a leg.

For almost well over a decade, Georg Finder has been sought out by attorneys and others looking to build a case and quantify damages done to personal credit worthiness. You could say he is something of a pioneer in the area.

"The thing I looked for is whether a third party caused the damage," says Finder. "If your credit rating is damaged because of something you do, then that doesn't count.

"You have to identify who caused the problem. Was it your bank, or was it a crook or your insurance company," says Finder. "There has to be an identifiable third party that did the damage."

The courts didn't always see it that way and attorneys didn't always seek to include credit damage in personal injury suits. If they did, they didn't always supply the courts with the information necessary to quantify the damage to a credit rating.

But because of Georg Finder, a smart-thinking California consultant and credit report expert, that's all changing. Many attorneys are now including, where applicable, damages for harm to an individual's ability to get credit or the increased cost of that credit because of what was done.

"Less than one percent of credit damage claims included in a complaint are recognized," says Finder. "They are thrown out because they do not come with backup."

On the other hand, cases where Finder provides expert testimony have about a 97 percent success rate.

Finder was doing seminars on credit reports for the real estate industry and lawyers when an attorney first asked him in 1995 to quantify the damages to the credit rating of a woman who had been duped in a real estate deal. "When she went to buy another house, she found out that the first one was in foreclosure and had not really been sold," says Finder. "Even thought she had done nothing wrong, the bank wanted to penalize her because of the information on her credit rating."

When the situation was resolved, the bank would only offer her $4,500 for damages to her credit reputation. The bank ended up paying the woman almost 10 times that amount because of Finder's testimony.

Four years ago, Home Depot had illegally and incorrectly interfered with a man's credit report. Because of the actions of Home Depot, the bank wanted to dramatically increase his borrowing costs. Finder quantified the damage to the man's credit reputation at $930,000. In the end, Home Depot was ordered to pay the individual well over a million dollars.

Credit ratings count big time! And damage to a credit report is compensable—although Finder says lawyers still need to recognize that putting forward detailed evidence at trial time will result in larger settlements and verdicts.


Georg Finder has expertise in analyzing, measuring and identifying compensable credit damage for individuals and attorneys. He has been testifying at trials in the US for the last 15 years. He hosts seminars and has written several books. The most recent is Credit Damage, Evaluation & Compensation.

CREDIT REPAIR DAMAGE Legal Help

If you or a loved one have suffered losses in this case, please click the link below and your complaint will be sent to a financial lawyer who may evaluate your CREDIT REPAIR DAMAGE claim at no cost or obligation.

Reader Comments

Posted by

on
I would love to go afterthe 3 credit reporing agency for not taking closed/paid acct off my credit report for 4 yrs,I would love to cause them some pain they kept me from getting a higher credit rating.

Posted by

on
The company I am speaking about in my last post was the only company among the many companies that I became indebted to that made no attempt at collecting the debt.

I strongly suspect the reason for this was to avoid a long term relationship that would allow me to defend my self, meaning the "legal limit of stature" whereby, when I discovered what actually took place their would be nothing that I could do about it.

That is really frustrating to know I will be responsible to my debts for the rest of my life, while they can forget about what they done to me after seven years, . .when this all took place I could not even afford a bankruptcy attorney.

Posted by

on
I was in the business of designing technology concepts for Search and Rescue Helicopters. I had a credit line that was appropriated by another credit line company, who happen to be a financial corporation owned by a Helicopter company that was a U.S. Defense Department contractor.I entrusted to them my business plan including the concepts of novel technologies. They led me to believe that they supported small business and that they would provide someone to access my business plan.When it came time to refinance I depended and trusted them. They ignored all communications
with no know reason to me. My entire credit collapsed leaving me in debt to many financiers. I do not believe that this would have happened if it were not for the fact that there was an interest in the value of the future of the technology I entrusted to this Financial Corporation, and therefore see my credit collapse as being caused by this, third party's fraudulent intention.

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