Scumbag attorney......Dad in Kansas Jailed Over Medical Debt from Son’s Leukemia Treatments and Wife’s Seizures

JEDIYoda

Lifer
Jul 13, 2005
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What happenned to these people is just insane and very shady!! Being jailed for medical bills when you have to make a decision to feed your family or stave and pay your bills.....
“I’m just doing my job,” Hassenplug argued. “They want the money collected, and I’m trying to do my job as best I can by following the law.”

But any money that is collected means a big payday for Hassenplug. While bail money is typically returned to defendants when they come to court, in Coffeyville, the money goes to attorneys, CBS News reports.

“I get paid on what’s collected,” he said. “If the bail money’s applied to the judgement, I get a portion of that.”

A ProPublica report from October called Hassenplug the “most notorious” debt collector in town, where on a single day 90 people had been summoned over unpaid bills, in a town of 9,000.

In their report, Hassenplug faced a man with disabilities, who attested in his “debtor’s exam” that he likely would never be able to pay off his medical bills due to a lack of money.

“Well, this will end when one of us dies,” Hassenplug responded.


Dad in Kansas Jailed Over Medical Debt from Son’s Leukemia Treatments and Wife’s Seizures
Heather and her son Lane Biggs just needed medical care. A few years ago, Lane was getting treated for leukemia, which he was diagnosed with at age 5, and at the same time, his mom Heather developed seizures from Lyme disease. That left the family with piles of medical debt that they couldn’t afford.

They didn’t make enough to afford health insurance, but they made too much to qualify for Medicaid.

“We had so many multiple health issues in our family at the same time, it put us in a bracket that made insurance unattainable,” Heather told CBS News. “It made no sense. We would’ve had to have not eaten, not had a home.”

Her husband, Tres, was working two jobs in their hometown of Coffeyville, Kansas, where the poverty rate is twice the national average, but it wasn’t nearly enough to pay off the debt, which hit $70,000. After he missed a court appearance about his unpaid bills and was unable to get the money for the $500 bail, Tres was sent to jail.

“You wouldn’t think you’d go to jail over a medical bill,” he said. “[It was] scary. I was scared to death, because, you know, I’m a country kid. I had to strip down, get hosed and put a jumpsuit on.”

In Coffeyville, attorneys have taken advantage of the growing medical debts in low-income households. One lawyer interviewed by CBS News, Michael Hassenplug, pushed the local judge to establish a law that requires people with unpaid medical bills — even ones as low as $28 — to come to court every three months and say that they are too poor to afford their bills, called a “debtor’s exam.” And if they miss two of those court appearances, an arrest warrant goes out for contempt of court with a $500 bail.

Tres said that when it happened to him, they had “maybe $50 to $100” in the bank — not the $500 needed to make bail.

“I’m just doing my job,” Hassenplug argued. “They want the money collected, and I’m trying to do my job as best I can by following the law.”

But any money that is collected means a big payday for Hassenplug. While bail money is typically returned to defendants when they come to court, in Coffeyville, the money goes to attorneys, CBS News reports.

“I get paid on what’s collected,” he said. “If the bail money’s applied to the judgement, I get a portion of that.”

A ProPublica report from October called Hassenplug the “most notorious” debt collector in town, where on a single day 90 people had been summoned over unpaid bills, in a town of 9,000.

In their report, Hassenplug faced a man with disabilities, who attested in his “debtor’s exam” that he likely would never be able to pay off his medical bills due to a lack of money.

“Well, this will end when one of us dies,” Hassenplug responded.

The Biggs told CBS News that they don’t believe jail is the right answer for managing these crushing medical debts that they’re trying their best to pay off.

“I mean, it wasn’t like we weren’t paying any of our medical bills, that was the problem,” Heather said. “We couldn’t afford to pay all of them.”
 

Jhhnn

IN MEMORIAM
Nov 11, 1999
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Debtors prison is a violation of their 14th amendment rights and they should sue.
It's not about the debt but rather about failure to appear in court. Having to come in every 3 months forever is quite shitty, however. How the county can do that is a mystery to me. Declaring bankruptcy would fix that & lets the providers write off the debt.
 
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senseamp

Lifer
Feb 5, 2006
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Kansas is a Republican paradise, which is a close approximation of hell and should be a warning to others as to where Republican policies lead.
Here is what's going on with their schools:
 

brycejones

Lifer
Oct 18, 2005
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Kansas is a Republican paradise, which is a close approximation of hell and should be a warning to others as to where Republican policies lead.
Here is what's going on with their schools:
The GOP in Kansas is really bad. But the chair of the SMSD board of education is a Democrat, and that school district is one of the most liberal/moderate parts of the state voting wise. This isn’t really a GOP vs Democrat thing.

But yes the school board made a really shitty decision.
 

senseamp

Lifer
Feb 5, 2006
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The GOP in Kansas is really bad. But the chair of the SMSD board of education is a Democrat, and that school district is one of the most liberal/moderate parts of the state voting wise. This isn’t really a GOP vs Democrat thing.

But yes the school board made a really shitty decision.
They are forced into it by state funding cuts.
 

Thump553

Lifer
Jun 2, 2000
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I strongly suspect that article left out some critical facts in order to make their political point. No. 1, there is no jailing for unpaid debt in the USA as several previously pointed out. If KS law is like the law in the two states I practiced, there were several stages (and pleadings served on the defendant) before he was ordered into court-which he failed to show up for. He was most likely jailed for contempt of court for failure to obey the court order to appear. Here at that stage an arrest warrant is issued and a sheriff arrests you and brings you to court. At that stage the judge orders an examination of debtor to be done then and there.

Why doesn't the defendant file bankruptcy and end this harassment? Unanswered question here.

And yes, the attorney is almost certainly an a-hole. That's almost a job requirement to be a debt collector.
 
Mar 11, 2004
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Yes, Kansas fucked itself. But they literally just voted in a Democrat for governor, so people saying they won't vote Democrat, what? Hell they two termed one not that long ago (Sebelius, whom left to be HHS under Obama). The problem is they need to do that top down and and keep with it.

I strongly suspect that article left out some critical facts in order to make their political point. No. 1, there is no jailing for unpaid debt in the USA as several previously pointed out. If KS law is like the law in the two states I practiced, there were several stages (and pleadings served on the defendant) before he was ordered into court-which he failed to show up for. He was most likely jailed for contempt of court for failure to obey the court order to appear. Here at that stage an arrest warrant is issued and a sheriff arrests you and brings you to court. At that stage the judge orders an examination of debtor to be done then and there.

Why doesn't the defendant file bankruptcy and end this harassment? Unanswered question here.

And yes, the attorney is almost certainly an a-hole. That's almost a job requirement to be a debt collector.

Eh, I think there's more shitty behavior in this type of thing than you're willing to admit. And a lot of it is by the system and not because of some particularly virulently asshole lawyer. Its not like there's a lot the judge can fucking do when people are strapped like that. Plus, those people tend to generally not be able to get worthwhile representation or know let alone understand the law well, which tends to not serve them well. Hell, I know I personally have a strong aversion to court because there's a miniscule amount of positive reasons I'd ever be in one.

Well duh (they were arrested for not complying with the court), but obviously its because their situation is fucked (and they likely assumed there's nothing they can do about it). Not sure if you've ever been in a situation where you can't really bend your entire life to fit around court orders or not, but that's one way that the system fucks people over. Oh and guess what getting arrested tends to do for people in those situations? Jobs tend to not look favorable towards you being arrested, regardless of what it was for or it even being legitimate or you being completely innocent.

Maybe because he doesn't have the money? I've encountered a lot of people where they got taken to court over debts, where they didn't have the money to pay for the debts or the money to declare bankruptcy. What fucking option do those people have? Wanna guess what garnishing their wages did? Just fucked them over even more, where they then end up not able to afford a vehicle, maybe their current living situation (which often isn't easy to change, and generally requires a lot of money), or more, and before you know it their in a feedback loop that just sends them down.

Hell, just think of the psychological toll that dealing with that situation would take on someone. You think that person is fit to appear in a court?
 

woolfe9998

Lifer
Apr 8, 2013
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Yes, being in debt is not a criminal offense. However, when a creditor sues and gets a judgment, or for that matter, if anyone sues and gets a judgment for anything, even say an injury claim, they are entitled to collect on the judgment. If the judgment debtor doesn't pay, the judgment creditor can get a order of examination from the court to require the debtor to show up and testify as to the state of their assets. If the judgment debtor doesn't show up, they can be jailed for contempt of court. Typically jail time for this is measured in days and it requires violating the order at least a couple of times.

The above is true in all 50 states, for every kind of legal judgment, be it for medical bills or wrongful death.

What's different in Kansas is this law that requires people with judgments against them for unpaid medical bills to show up once every three months for a debtor's examination. It isn't that strange, however. Any kind of judgment debtor can be required to show up for a debtor's exam more than once if it's requested by the judgment creditor.

This is kind of a phony issue. The core issue here is that these people should not be facing these kinds of crippling medical bills that they can't pay for in the first place. The system needs to change. Kansas' debtor exam rules are a second or third order issue at best.
 
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Thump553

Lifer
Jun 2, 2000
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Over my career I've seen quite a few of these proceedings and I don't recall a single one where the defendant was jailed for longer than it took to appear before the court-where the judge swears them in for their examination which the attorney does elsewhere (usually the court hallway). The contempt is dismissed at the end of the examination. It may be different in other states but I don't think any judges want the state to pay for incarceration for such reasons.

And if they are truly broke the bankruptcy court has a procedure where the filing fees, etc. can be waived.
 

Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
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People get burned in legal discussions because they do not have the mental discipline to logically analyze the facts and then infer from the facts. They also can't figure went relevant facts aren't reported.

First, the title is incorrect, it is not direct jailing for debt. It is for contempt of court. Those who want to call it debtors prison are already dead in the water in an intellectual debate because it isn't debtors' prison per se.

This has nothing to do with party affiliation. Lawyers and the courts are in it to make money just as much, if not more so to engage in intellectual exercise. There are Democratic lawyers doing their debt collection work for clients who probably also vote for Democrats.

Coffeyville is indeed a small town, and with a small town of citizens means relatively little means of making revenue for the legal system there. This is quite the creative way of boosting the revenue stream for the courts and the attorneys in that locale. Now, the reason bigger cities and states don't employ this method is that they have so many more people doing naughty things or being fined for being negligent(forgetting to wear a seat belt is not incarcerable in Maryland) that the stream of people going into the prison system is plentiful, if not excessive.

The reporting is also deficient because no mention of docket documents or court recordings were mentioned in the report.

Is this legal? yes
Is this also predatory and exploitative? yes

But Kansas is its own sovereign and the most egregious stories come from states that Universal Healthcare proponents look down up with contempt because politics. Let them fix their own crap. Don't go patting yourself for being some white knight who doesn't know crap.
 

Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
11,878
2,712
136
Yes, being in debt is not a criminal offense. However, when a creditor sues and gets a judgment, or for that matter, if anyone sues and gets a judgment for anything, even say an injury claim, they are entitled to collect on the judgment. If the judgment debtor doesn't pay, the judgment creditor can get a order of examination from the court to require the debtor to show up and testify as to the state of their assets. If the judgment debtor doesn't show up, they can be jailed for contempt of court. Typically jail time for this is measured in days and it requires violating the order at least a couple of times.

The above is true in all 50 states, for every kind of legal judgment, be it for medical bills or wrongful death.

What's different in Kansas is this law that requires people with judgments against them for unpaid medical bills to show up once every three months for a debtor's examination. It isn't that strange, however. Any kind of judgment debtor can be required to show up for a debtor's exam more than once if it's requested by the judgment creditor.

This is kind of a phony issue. The core issue here is that these people should not be facing these kinds of crippling medical bills that they can't pay for in the first place. The system needs to change. Kansas' debtor exam rules are a second or third order issue at best.
You're never going to jail in Maryland for small claims actions or general torts under 15,000. It's very clear. This particular TOWN in KANSAS rolls differently, but it's all after the same principle: to make money for the entire legal system and to avoid costs financially and publicly. The sheriff or process servers in MD makes money if you choose to use them instead of having a third party of your own choosing serve small claims. The court makes money. The attorneys, if hired, make money. No jailing means people don't go crying tot he news that they were jailed over a debt. The populations are far larger in a Maryland county than little Coffeyville, so abuse is done lying low and quietly by the system here.
 

woolfe9998

Lifer
Apr 8, 2013
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You're never going to jail in Maryland for small claims actions or general torts under 15,000. It's very clear.

Which is strange to me. If someone, say, hits you with their car, doesn't have insurance (or is under-insured), you go to court and get a judgment, if it's an amount under $15,000 there is simply no way to collect on the judgment. If the defendant doesn't pay, without an order of examination, there is no way to locate that person's assets.

Orders of examination are an essential part of the civil process. Without them, a defendant can just fail to pay the judgment and there is no consequence.
 

Jhhnn

IN MEMORIAM
Nov 11, 1999
62,365
14,681
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Which is strange to me. If someone, say, hits you with their car, doesn't have insurance (or is under-insured), you go to court and get a judgment, if it's an amount under $15,000 there is simply no way to collect on the judgment. If the defendant doesn't pay, without an order of examination, there is no way to locate that person's assets.

Orders of examination are an essential part of the civil process. Without them, a defendant can just fail to pay the judgment and there is no consequence.

Yeh, but coming back to it every 90 days is ridiculous. Here in CO, garnishment of wages is often used to collect debts.
 

Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
11,878
2,712
136
Which is strange to me. If someone, say, hits you with their car, doesn't have insurance (or is under-insured), you go to court and get a judgment, if it's an amount under $15,000 there is simply no way to collect on the judgment. If the defendant doesn't pay, without an order of examination, there is no way to locate that person's assets.

Orders of examination are an essential part of the civil process. Without them, a defendant can just fail to pay the judgment and there is no consequence.
Basically, something is civil until the government says its not.
Motor vehicle and traffic laws in Maryland are under their own statutes and penalties and overlap with criminal law. Thus, someone charged with a traffic offense with penalty of incarceration can apply for the public defender. Police also issue repair orders for vehicles and the like. Neglect the repair over 30 days, and your registration gets suspended; get caught, and your in the criminal case system, although arrest is highly unlikely. The police can help track down the individual in case he tries to flee or charge him with a traffic violation for being uninsured.Miss a hearing, and a bench warrant issued, although arrests almost never happen and if you act dumb, the judges are lenient as hell. But suing for damages in an accident is a civil matter. The case regarding traffic violations of state law will not deal with assets or how he will pay back the damages to the victim. Traffic law is for the state and its agencies(MVA in Maryland)to get their coin through fines. The damages are pursued through civil cases. The victim’s own insurance would first cover the difference or the legal minimum. Any more, and it’s time for an attorney. Attorney in motor vehicle suits work on a contingency basis, so access is not an issue but they’ll take a cut of 1/3.

Civil litigation, which is for contracts and debts. Hospital debt would fall under small or large claims under the particular locale of Maryland. Dog bites, rent, services rendered but not paid for, credit card default. As an aside, winning a dog bite case in Maryland is less likely than dying by lightning because you cannot even contribute 1% of guilt in causing the dog to bite you.


This matter is just an extreme version of a tiny local municipality enforcing strict rules not commonly found elsewhere. The real stunner is that such a small town has its own court to begin with.