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Bankruptcy Attorney Did Not Reaffirm, Can I Sue

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  • 01-28-2010, 02:38 PM
    sweetpea3829
    Bankruptcy Attorney Did Not Reaffirm, Can I Sue
    My question involves malpractice by a lawyer in the state of: Rhode Island

    In 2007, my husband and I had a Chapt 7 discharged. We filed because we were losing our 2nd rental property due to negligent tenants, unpaid rent, damage, etc. you get the picture. Prior, we had excellent credit, never paid anything late, ever. The only things that ever were late were the home loan on that 2nd property as well as the credit cards we used to make payments while the house sat on the market. Our primary property as well as two vehicle loans had never been late.

    When we filed, we indicated several times that it was our intent to keep these other loans. Our attorney NEVER mentioned our need to reaffirm. We assumed that the loans we wanted to keep would be listed on the bankruptcy (because we were told everything needs to be listed), but not discharged.

    They were discharged. We found out last summer and are in the process of re-opening the bankruptcy (with a new attorney) to reaffirm the home loan.

    My question is this: Can we sue the original attorney for damages? Our credit report is damaged because the home loan shows as discharged, no payment history even though we've never been late. While it can be fixed, our auto loan that we paid off cannot be and will show as discharged for ten more years.

    Because of this, we have been unable to obtain credit (though I recognize the difficulty in linking the attorney's error to our inability to obtain credit).

    If we can sue him, what kind of case would we have? We've lost $500 already in filing and attorney's fees to have this fixed. We lost the $4500 cash for clunkers credit because the bank we applied with stated we had failed to rebuild our credit (despite our credit score being just shy of 700). Do we have a case? Small claims? Should I just contact him and ask him to pay for the cost to refile?
  • 01-30-2010, 02:06 PM
    Mr. Knowitall
    Re: Bankruptcy Attorney Did Not Reaffirm, Can I Sue
    So the only direct injury you're claiming is harm to your credit score?
  • 01-31-2010, 02:03 PM
    sweetpea3829
    Re: Bankruptcy Attorney Did Not Reaffirm, Can I Sue
    I think the only direct injury that we can claim is the loss of the $500+ to have the problem fixed. Technically speaking. However....we were declined an auto loan in August of 2009 and the stated reason was "failure to rebuild credit." Had the car loan and home loan been reaffirmed, our credit would have been rebuilt. Our inability to rebuild our credit is a direct result of his negligence in not informing us of our need to reaffirm.

    Can the damage be quantified? Well...I think with some help from the credit bureaus who couuld provide a projected credit score if everything else had been the same AND the two loans had been properly reaffirmed, I think we can begin to see a picture of how this damaged us.

    Because of our credit not being rebuilt, despite our timely payments, we were declined on that auto loan. Which caused us to lose out on the $4500 cash for clunkers voucher...which we qualified for otherwise.

    We were also recently declined credit for the same reason (as we're still in the process of getting the problem fixed).

    We were finally approved for a vehicle loan, no rate listed yet (it's a preapproval) but I imagine the rate will be higher than it would have been had our credit been reporting accurately.

    I understand that a lot of this is probably inadmissable. But is it? At the very least, the attorney's blunder has cost us $500+ in additional legal and filing fees.

    Or, do we have no leg to stand on at all?
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