in Newswire Published on January 24, 2023

Class Action Alleges 21st Mortgage Corporation Unlawfully Placed ‘Repeated,’ ‘Harassing’ Phone Calls to Borrowers [DISMISSED]

Last Updated on March 14, 2024

Tatick v. 21st Mortgage Corporation et al.

Filed: January 20, 2023 ◆§ 3:23-cv-00108

A class action alleges 21st Mortgage Corporation has placed “repeated, annoying, and harassing” debt collection phone calls to borrowers, even after being asked to stop.

Defendant(s)

21st Mortgage Corporation

Law(s)

California Business and Professions Code Rosenthal Fair Debt Collections Practices Act

State(s)

California

March 14, 2024 – 21st Mortgage Phone Calls Lawsuit Voluntarily Dismissed by Plaintiff

The proposed class action detailed on this page was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice by the plaintiff on April 14, 2023.

The plaintiff’s two-page notice of voluntary dismissal states no reason as to why the consumer elected to drop the case.

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A proposed class action alleges 21st Mortgage Corporation has placed “repeated, annoying, and harassing” debt collection phone calls to borrowers, even after being asked to stop.

The 18-page case was filed by a California resident whose mortgage loan began to be serviced by 21st Mortgage in December 2017. The plaintiff claims that in April 2019, the company began calling her cell phone 10 to 15 times every day or every other day, demanding that she send that month’s mortgage payment, although the suit argues that the woman had already paid the full amount in two installments.

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The lawsuit says that the company’s harassing phone calls, which it would allegedly place as early as 7:30 a.m., would bring the plaintiff to tears:

“If Plaintiff did not answer her cellular phone, rather than leaving a voicemail message, Defendants would repeatedly call and hang up in 5- to 10-minute intervals until Plaintiff answered her phone. When Plaintiff did answer Defendants’ calls, Defendants would berate Plaintiff for being delinquent on her account. Defendants would belittle and intimidate Plaintiff during these phone calls, calling her ‘broke,’ a ‘loser,’ telling her to ‘go get a job’ and to borrow money from her parents, among other demeaning and belittling comments.”

According to the case, 21st Mortgage also called the woman’s home phone number and left voicemails nearly every day from April through July 2019, even after she repeatedly requested that the company stop contacting her.

The suit claims that on July 26, 2019, 21st Mortgage issued the plaintiff a notice of default, stating that she owed the company $1,439.15 for June and July 2019 installments and late charges. Although the plaintiff cured the default on August 28, 12 days before payment was due, the company called and emailed the woman three times throughout the following days, claiming that she still owed them money, the lawsuit alleges.

Per the suit, 21st Mortgage “intentionally and willfully” ignored the plaintiff’s pleas to be left alone and continued to harass the woman over the phone. Under California’s Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, debt collectors are prohibited from “causing a telephone to ring repeatedly or continuously to annoy the person called” and “communicating by telephone … with the debtor with such frequency as to be unreasonable and to constitute a harassment to the debtor under the circumstance,” the case relays.

As a result of the company’s unlawful debt collection practices, the plaintiff and other borrowers have suffered from “loss of appetite, frustration, fear, anger, anxiety, stress, sleeplessness, and the like, which have in turn affected their ability to work and earn a living,” the complaint stresses.

The lawsuit looks to represent anyone who, within the past four years, entered into a mortgage instrument to secure a debt owed on real property, including manufactured and mobile homes, that is, or was, serviced by 21st Mortgage Corporation and received debt collection phone calls from the company.

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