I hired an attorney, Bodie, Nagle, Smith, Dolina & Hobbs (referred to as "the firm" for the rest of this report) of Maryland to collect on a judgment in my favor (my mother's actually, but I hired them on her behalf and had checks sent directly to her). This was in 1999, and although the level of service I have received from this firm over the years, and 4 different employees my account had been passed to, has been terrible, at least the firm succeeded in getting a real deadbeat of a person to begin making the minimum payments ($25 per month on a $1000 debt plus interest).
Well, recently the man switched from sending personal checks to money orders, and soon after that, stopped sending payments. When I called the firm to find out what action they were taking (for 5 plus years I had to call them and repeatedly remind them to put both me and my mother on status letters or emails, and had to prompt them to take action each time the payments stopped for months), they told me that they had closed their collections branch, and would be happy to send me copies of the file for my records.in short, they were taking no further action to collect the judgment, which has grown to $1200 due to interest and lapses in payments.
I have an agreement that THE FIRM made ME sign, stating that I agreed to give them 33% of the judgment. So is this piece of paper not a contract between me and the firm? How can they drop my judgment/account when we have that agreement? Just because the deadbeat makes it difficult? That the firm actually has to work to get it? The very first woman the firm had on my case told me that whatever resources the firm had to spend to collect the judgment would be tacked on to the debt, and that the person in debt was made aware of this. He chose to pay only the $25 the judge mandated, although everyone who knows him knows he is living well and is not hurting.
I would like to know what I have to do to get my mother's money, and what I can do to keep the firm from doing this to us. I bet they make millions a year, and they want to screw the little guy because our business, which they voluntarily took, is not profitable enough for them. One of the young lawyers there, Chris Keelty, actually TOLD me on the phone that he was actually losing money by talking to me on the phone because he bills at $160 per hour. Nice huh?
Nobody made these jokers take my judgment for collection, and now I've invested 5 years and have been very patient with them and they say that they are permitted to drop my account. I wonder what chance I would have had, after signing our agreement, of getting them to accept less than 33%. Stay away from this firm. Their customers mean NOTHING to them. Doing the right thing means NOTHING to them. Only raking in as much money with as little effort as possible actually means something to Bodie, Nagle, Smith, Dolina & Hobbs.
Thank you!
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