Debt Collection Torts
![handle is hein.journals/wvb67 and id is 205 raw text is: Debt Collection Torts
CA'uu~s E. HulT*
Collection activity is a necessary and usual part of a credit-
based economy. Cost and time elements require creditors to
exercise their own efforts to collect debts before having to resort
to court action. Of course these extra-judicial efforts cannot run
afoul of the rights of debtors. Courts have long recognized that
debtors have certain rights protecting them from overzealous col-
lection activities. This is evidenced by a wealth of court decisions,
commonly called rough collection cases. Traditional and well
established tort or civil action theories have long been resorted to
by debtors seeking redress from creditors for collection abuses.
However, in recent years debtors have been seeking and obtaining
large verdicts against collection agencies, small loan companies
and other debt collectors on liability theories involving an exten-
sion of the tort concept of invasion of privacy. It appears that
courts are inclined to extend these theories of liability in order to
more adequately protect debtors from collection activities varying
from the usual.
ABUSE OF PR OcFS
The action of abuse of process may be used when legally issued
process is used for a purpose other than the purpose for which it
was designed.' The essential elements of this tort are an ulterior
purpose plus wrongful, improper use of the process.2 In contrast to
the action of malicious prosecution, which lies when factually un-
supportable prosecution occurs,3 abuse of process requires neither
termination in favor of the plaintiff, nor a lack of probable cause.'
The conduct upon which liability is founded occurs after the pro-
cess is issued,5 and there need be no showing of malice in having
the process issued.6
The cases in which creditors have been held liable on the theory
of abuse of process fall generally into three categories:' (1) the
* Member of the Kanawha County Bar.
'Glidewell v. Murray-Lacy & Co., 124 Va. 563, 98 S.E. 665 (1919).
2 PRossER, TORTS § 100 (2d ed. 1955).
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
slbid.
6 Ibid.
7 16 N.C.L. REv. 277, 280 (1938).
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Debt Collection Torts
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