(h/t to The Indiana Law Blog.) A fun story in the Indy Star entitled Millionaire Emmis CEO battles Honda over $1,945. Apparently some Repo Men working on behalf of Honda Finance entered onto the property of Jeffrey Smulyan, tycoon CEO of Emmis broadcasting, to repossess his girlfriend’s (now wife’s) Honda. He has an invasion of privacy/harassment/trespassing type lawsuit against Honda Finance in response to their efforts to repossess the vehicle at 2 a.m.
Emotionally, I think I was with Smulyan until I saw this quote:
Heather Smulyan said a Honda Finance company employee she spoke with was rude, and that she would have settled for an apology.
“They don’t even think they did anything wrong,” she said.
I do a lot of collections, so the fact that I was emotionally in Smulyan’s camp was a bit surprising to me. Must’ve been the fact that the activity was occurring at 2 a.m. But then the self-righteous indignation from Heather Smulyan pushed me back on the side of the creditor. I’ve been on the receiving end of too many debtors who somehow think I’m to blame for the fact that they haven’t paid their bills on time. Creditors have to pay me decent money to go after debtors. I assume it’s the case with Honda Finance. Furthermore, sales on repossessed vehicles are generally a money losing proposition. So, I just have to assume that Heather Smulyan wasn’t just a day late and a dollar short one time, leading to the Repo Ninjas and their 2 a.m. stealth action. I wonder if her conversations contained any of the ‘DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?’ indignation to them.
Who knows, maybe Honda Finance was out of line. It happens. There are creditors out there that go well beyond what even I, an advocate of creditor’s rights, feel comfortable with. Why, just today, I could have asked the Court to issue a writ to arrest a blind man who didn’t brave the drifting snows to show up in court today. But, instead, I asked the Court to reset the court date for next month to give him a second chance. The judge chuckled at me for showing some small evidence of having a heart.
But I digress. Solely from reading what appeared in that article, I just hope there is some way they can both lose.
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