Creditor should have translated court papers for debtor, judge says.....

      I just could not pass up this article posted in my local newspaper today March 9, 2007.

      "Should a lawyer be required to translate court documents into Spanish if a defendant does not speak English?
      The question has thrust a newly elected Dallas judge into the nation's immigration debate after she set aside a credit card company's court motion, in part because the debtor did not speak English and the motion documents were not in Spanish.
      Critics of Judge D'Metria Benson, who presides over County Court at Law No. 1, say the court system should not bend over backward for those who do not speak English. But her supporters say she is simply leveling a playing field that has been slanted toward debt collectors for years."
      This statement may well be true , but the question is, do judges have the  right to create new laws simply because they do not agree with current laws? I think not.
     "The criticism began after a January 19, 2007 hearing in a case involving Citibank South Dakota and Glenn Heights resident Refugio Guzman, who owed the credit card company $15,000.00.
     "Judge Benson set aside the bank's motion for summary judgment, which requests that a judge rule before trial because the facts are clear. She sent the case into mediation and ordered Mr. Guzman to show up with a translator."
     "There is no statute or rule that I know of that permits a judge in Texas to force one party to translate a pleading for another party, said Mr. Hartnett."
     "Other lawyers who work in the county courts, where most debt cases are heard, complained that the judge overstepped her bounds."
     Have we all forgotten who foots the bills for the court cases?  It is all of the hard working taxpayers who are obligated to pay the expenses. What about the liability of the credit company who created this problem in the first place. We all are aware of what happens when individuals and businesses default, right? The interest rates on credit cards just inch up more and more and more. This only creates an atmosphere in which the hard working taxpayers are stuck paying higher interest rates because someone thinks they can pull off a scam of sorts.
     Anyway, the article continues....."Immigration reform activists note that Mr. Guzman must have understood what was happening because he had filed an answer to the lawsuit in ENGLISH. Everything should be done in English. This is America," said Jean Towell, president of Citizens for Immigration Reform. They need to learn our language and we should not have to pay for it."
     "Mr. Guzman said in court documents that he had fallen behind in his bills because he was raising ten children and taking care of his sick mother in Mexico."
      Name a family that does not have financial difficulty from time to time. We still have to pay our bills, or file bankruptcy when we can not, right.
     I have to wonder why the credit card company extended so much credit in the first place?  Could it be simply greed?

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      This article induced me to thinking about an incident my husband and I had a few weeks ago. Robert was at work, he fell out of the cargo hold of an airplane and hurt his back as well as receiving cuts and bruises. We had to report to a medical facility that deals with Workman's Comp. cases.
      The receptionist at the desk handed him a medical form to fill out and return. There was just one little problem, it was written in Spanish. He brought the form back to the receptionist and requested a form in English. She asked him if he wanted her to translate it for him. He said no, just please give me a form in ENGLISH. She said she ran out of forms in English and this Spanish version was all she had.
      Well, what do you do? Do you start an arguement?
She asked him to make sure he signs the form, the form he cannot read! He said, he was very sorry, but he could not sign anything he could not read. She asked what the big deal was, after all, all the forms are the same anyway.
     I asked Robert to just give her back the blank medical forms and we will leave. We went back to the car and Robert called work to find out if he could go to another medical facility. He explained what had just transpired and after a few minutes they gave him another medical facility to go to. Meanwhile, his lower back had swollen to the size of a grapefruit.
      My point in all of this is simple. I thought we still lived in America, with the main language being English. The receptionist at the medical facility was wrong to ask Robert to sign medical papers when they are not even printed in English. In America the main language is English, the default language is whatever language you want it to be.
      We have since filed a formal complaint for whatever good it will do.