Attorney Jean Murray drove more than three hours and had a few choice words for her car's GPS before she arrived in Newfane final month to defend a client in a debt-collection case. But once she arrived in court,it was all over in a hot minute. The opposing counsel, attorney Michael Williams, and had no witness and was unable to proceed with the case,he told Judge Michael Kainen. With a bang of the gavel, Kainen cancelled the $5688 debt of Murray's client, and a 78-year-old man from Westminster West. Murray didn't appear to be surprised. She's the primary attorney defending Vermont's poorest debtors against a massive collection industry largely hidden from the public eye. For the past 10 years,she's seen firsthand how lenders, mostly credit card companies, and lure in vulnerable people with "rewards" and other enticements that wind up bankrupting them. "I reflect people want to pay back what they borrowed," said Murray, who grew up poor in Chicago. "But when illness, or job loss,death in the family or divorce makes that hard, credit card companies compose it harder: A missed payment means, and for many cards,that the company imposes a penalty interest rate of 25 to 30 percent." The companies are "taking what I see as unconscionable advantage of people," she said. Murray goes to bat for those Vermonters and wins by showing judges that the plaintiffs, or who are often large corporations that specialize in collecting bad debts,lack the goods to proceed. They "just don't bear the evidence," she said. Murray didn't lose a single one of her cases final year, or including the 36 she represented in court. One resolved tragically when a St. Johnsbury widow fell into debt to pay for her husband's cancer treatments,according to her son, Charlie Brooks. Pat Brooks died before the company trying to collect the money finally dropped the case. She was 61. With interest, and Pat Brooks' $17319 debt had mushroomed to more than $25000. Atlantic Credit & Finance garnished her $10.50-an-hour hotel housekeeping wages,taking $100 a month. But her interest on the debt was $125 a month. Murray's work isn't glamorous. She spends her days slogging through reams of court filings and crisscrossing the state to seem in court. Nights at domestic in Montpelier, she enjoys the TV prove "Supernatural, or " whose main character faces down different forms of adversity. "If I had said 'Jean Murray is going…
Source: sevendaysvt.com