Unique Funding Solutions Lawsuit: 7 Things to Do in the First 72 Hours

Service of process moves the dispute into a forum where calendars matter more than grievances. The owner who assembles the file before retaining counsel changes what counsel can do in the first conference.

Seven tasks belong in the seventy two hours after service. None requires a conclusion about liability. Each protects deadlines, documents, and the particular defense that improvisation would destroy, and together they decide whether counsel begins with material or with memory.

Calendar the Response Deadline

On the day service occurs, open every envelope and inventory every attachment. Identify the caption, the court, the index number, and the story the papers tell about the debt, then fix the response deadline in two calendars and count forward from the date of service shown on the affidavit rather than from the morning the papers were read.

From the date of service shown on the affidavit, not from the morning the owner found time to read, the deadline runs. Ask a second person to verify the count (service rules vary by court and method, which counsel confirms from the papers rather than from assumption).

Simply state to any caller that service occurred and that counsel will respond, since nothing else in that conversation helps the defense.

Match the Plaintiff to the Agreement

Public pages for Unique Funding Solutions present ISO partnerships, syndication, and funding decisions in hours across many industries. That breadth carries a warning no owner should ignore: brand names, servicing agents, and prior holders of the same balance are not interchangeable, and a response directed to the brand on the statements rather than the plaintiff on the caption wastes the very hours this article protects.

Often the caption names a party the owner has never paid, a peculiar feature of balances that have been sold or pledged without notice. Someone sold this balance, or pledged it, or assigned its collection, and the statements kept showing the familiar name throughout. Compare the plaintiff on the papers with the counterparty on the signed agreement and every amendment, and review and analyze the guaranty as a separate obligation that may follow its own path.

Plaintiff counsel files in haste in order to force errors before defense counsel appears. The identity of the party suing is a question the documents answer on their face, and counsel needs that answer before framing any defense against the named plaintiff.

Test the Confession of Judgment

The confession often decides the case before the pleadings are drafted. Many merchant suits arrive with a confession executed at funding, and the first work of counsel is to test that instrument rather than to accept its arithmetic.

The New York confession of judgment statute permits entry of judgment without an action upon an affidavit executed by the defendant stating the sum, authorizing entry, and stating the county of residence with the facts of the debt. Counsel can ensure the filed confession is measured against each element: the signature, the authorization, the stated sum, the county, and the dates counsel must reconcile with the affidavit of service, since the clerk taxes costs of fifteen dollars besides disbursements and the affidavit may be filed only within three years after execution.

The affidavit bears a signature. The signature does not establish that the sum confessed was justly due. Sign no acknowledgment, stipulation, or payment promise concerning the confession before that review concludes.

Preserve the File

A file assembled in seventy two hours is extremely difficult to reconstruct later. Gather and preserve the record before the first conference with counsel, in this order:

• The signed agreement with every amendment and guaranty.
• Twelve months of bank records showing each debit.
• Every message exchanged with the funder or its collectors.
• The papers themselves, with the envelopes they arrived in.

The summons is a calendar disguised as a letter.

Begin a contact log if none exists, recording each call with date, time, name, and a note on what was demanded, since demands made by telephone become evidence used against the owner.

Read the Arbitration Provisions

Before assuming the courthouse decides the dispute, read the dispute provisions. Federal arbitration law treats covered written arbitration agreements as enforceable, subject to generally applicable contract defenses and statutory exceptions.

Formation, scope, delegation, and the question whether the clause was waived each require assessment on the actual language. An arbitration provision neither proves the whole instrument enforceable nor proves it void, so transmit the clause to counsel with the papers rather than characterizing it over the telephone. The characterization can wait. The deadline cannot.

Stabilize the Operating Account

Payroll absorbs the first shock of any restraint. Money in the operating account after service sits like luggage on a platform after the train has been canceled: present, visible, and suddenly subject to claims the owner never scheduled.

But the account cannot be defended by balance alone. Ask the bank what procedures apply to the account, ask counsel how a restraint would reach vendors and wages, and read the guaranty again as the obligation through which claims against the owner survive the company. There are protections, though the files that benefit from them are fewer than owners hope, and the bank describes its own procedures, which in our experience differ more between branches than the policies suggest.

Resist the urge to empty the account the night service arrives. Unexplained transfers complicate the defense they were meant to protect, which is how haste does the other side’s work.

Retain Counsel and Route Contact

The file counsel receives in week one determines the posture for a year. I drafted a response of this kind on a Friday in August, and the weekend did none of the waiting for us, so engage counsel before the deadline week rather than inside it (counsel will ask for the affidavit of service before anything else).

What the owner signs, or declines to sign, in the first week becomes the record the other side reads. Any direct contact with the funding party, even casually, alters the posture of the account, so route all further communication through counsel once engaged. The difference between a defended file and a reconstructed story is extremely material to strategy, and Delancey Street, a debt settlement company that coordinates with independently licensed counsel for legal work, ensures the settlement track and the litigation track proceed on the same calendar beginning with a free confidential initial review.

Most owners wait for a calmer week to call counsel. The calmer week never arrives.