Checks To Be Mailed in Arcadia/CitiFinancial Class Action
Persons whose vehicles were repossessed by Arcadia Financial, who received a post-repossession notice of intent to dispose (NOI) between November 1, 2002 and September 25, 2007 and against whom Arcadia sought a deficiency are--with minor exceptions--members of the Settlement Class in Juarez v. Arcadia.
In an earlier post, we reported that the San Diego County Superior Court finally approved the proposed class action settlement in January. Arcadia Financial (now CitiFinancial Auto) has now funded that settlement. That means the settlement administrator, Rosenthal & Company, will be sending checks to persons who made deficiency payments to Arcadia, within the next week or so. If you are a class member and made a deficiency payment to Arcadia after your car was repossessed, check your mailbox!
In addition, Arcadia is required to take steps so that all class members' records will reflect that they do not owe Arcadia anything on account of their deficiencies, whether they made any payments or not. Arcadia must change its internal records so that each class member's account reflects a zero balance. If an outside collection agency was trying to collect, it must recall those collection efforts. It must instruct the three credit reporting agencies, Equifax, TransUnion and Experian, to delete Arcadia's tradeline on class members' credit reports.
Arcadia's deadline for taking these steps has passed. However, it often takes a while for credit reporting agencies to change their records. If you are a class member, check your credit report next month to be sure it shows a zero balance owed to Arcadia.
What are the grounds for this lawsuit? Our class action alleged that Arcadia had failed to include all of the conditions precedent to reinstatement in its NOIs, as California law requires. If the NOI does not include all the disclosures the law requires, then creditors are not entitled to any deficiency after they sell the repossessed vehicle and apply the sale proceeds to the contract. The trial court determined that Arcadia's NOI was proper and entered judgment against the class. But the Court of Appeal disagreed and reversed, in a published opinion, Juarez v. Arcadia Financial Ltd, 152 Cal.App.4th 889 (2007). Because the Court of Appeal held that Arcadia's NOIs did not comply with California law, we were able to negotiate a class action settlement.
