Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Virginia

Re: getting back money that somebody owes me

All you can do is sue them. And in VA, yes, you can use the tape.

Re: getting back money that somebody owes me

I'd like to amplify what Mr. Press said about using the tape, because the BBS the message was posted to is available nationwide.

There are six states in which it would be illegal to make the tape, use the tape, or even be in possession of the tape, and the last time I checked these were: Hawaii, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, and Michigan. That's from memory, so anyone wanting wanting to do something like that should check their local law first - look up "Eavesdropping, Wiretapping, and Electronic Surveillance".

As to using the tape as evidence in Virginia, there are a couple of things to watch out for. First are bogus objections: there's a statute that requires tape recordings of (note this well) telephone conversations to contain information about the call at the beginning and ending of the conversation in order to be admissible - yours isn't a telephone conversation so that rule doesn't apply but you'll have to be prepared to argue it; and secondly, you'll have to be prepared to show that the tape is legal under the "wiretapping" statute referred to earlier. (As Mr. Press has already said, it is, as long as you made the tape in Va. and intend to use it in a Va. court.)

The second set of evidence rules you'll have to deal with relate to identification of the tape. You should understand that evidence in Virginia comprises "oral testimony of witnesses having personal knowledge of the facts given under oath". Documents, charts, objects, tapes, etc., are called evidence, but they only support the primary or direct evidence. So in order to use something like that, you have to be or have a witness testify under oath about how and when the tape was made, who had custody of it from that time until the trial, etc. You have to "authenticate" the tape, and then you have to ask that it be admitted into evidence. If you don't ask, you don't get.

I suggest you contact an attorney in your area who does collections as a regular thing, and be prepared to pay up to half of whatever he can collect. It's better than nothing.