Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser announced September 23 that Wakefield & Associates agreed to resolve allegations of unlawful medical-debt collection. The state says the company sought default judgments without complying with protections that require evidence of the medical debt before a judgment is entered.
The settlement concerns 44 Colorado accounts. Wakefield must vacate any default judgments entered on those accounts and cannot seek new judgments until it provides notices and affidavits that comply with the law. It will also pay $30,000 to the state. The state payment is not described as a pool of refunds for every Wakefield customer.
Vacating a judgment is different from canceling the underlying debt. The agreement leaves open the possibility of a later compliant judgment, so an affected consumer should not assume a bill or court summons can be ignored. The release resolves allegations; it is not a finding that all accounts handled by the collector were unlawful.
Consumers dealing with a medical-debt case should retain notices, bills and court papers and check the status of their own judgment. The Colorado attorney general accepts complaints about unfair collection. This recent enforcement action makes the paperwork safeguards concrete, but its 44-account remedy should not be expanded into a statewide promise of debt forgiveness.