The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has sued debt-collection law firm Forster & Garbus, alleging that since 2014 the firm has attempted to collect more than 99,000 debts without any “meaningful attorney involvement” in the actions.

Instead, the law firm, based in Commack, New York, has “relied on non-attorney support staff, automation, and both a cursory and deficient review of account files to attempt to collect more than 99,000 debts that consumers allegedly owe to Forster & Garbus' clients,” states the complaint, which the CFPB filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

In addition, the law firm has “represented to consumers that its attorneys were meaningfully involved” in a flood of debt-collection lawsuits it has brought in recent years, thereby allegedly misleading consumers and, as a result, violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, according to a CFPB news release about its case.

The federal agency also claims that Forster & Garbus has violated the Consumer Financial Protection Act's prohibition against deceptive acts and practices by making such representations to consumers through its suits, the news release adds.

An attorney representing Forster & Garbus said in a statement that the law firm denies the CFPB's allegations and that the firm is “fully committed to defending its ethical and compliance practices and we look forward to our day in court.”

Joann Needleman, a member of Clark Hill in Philadelphia, also said that “F&G fully cooperated with the CFPB during the course of this investigation which included the production of thousands of pages of documents and submitting to two (2) investigational hearings.”

“Given this,” she said, “we were deeply disappointed that the allegations in the complaint … misstated the sworn testimony by F&G attorneys and badly mischaracterized the information and documentation we provided.”

She added, “F&G attorneys developed and have always been responsible for implementation of a robust and sophisticated set of policies and procedures that ensures all attorneys in the firm appropriately review information to support pleadings filed in court.”

According to the 17-page complaint, which seeks an injunction against Forster & Garbus' allegedly wrongful practices, among other remedies, the law firm uses “high-volume litigation tactics” to collect “substantial sums of money from consumers who may not actually owe debts or may not owe debts in the amounts claimed in the collection suits.”

“For several decades,” states the complaint, “Forster & Garbus has collected debts incurred primarily for personal, family, or household purposes,” as “creditors and debt buyers refer credit-card, auto-loan, student-loan, and home-equity-loan debts, among others, to Forster & Garbus for collection.”

At any given time between 2014 and 2016, the firm employed roughly 10 or 11 lawyers along with its two named partners, the complaint also says. It then adds “that since January 1, 2014, Forster & Garbus's clients have placed more than 136,700 accounts with the firm for collection.”

“Accounts placed with Forster & Garbus have generally been electronically sent to Forster & Garbus with the data needed to populate Forster & Garbus's templates for communications with consumers, including templates for civil complaints,” the complaint also alleges.

“Historically, unless a consumer disputes a debt, Forster & Garbus has generally not conducted any inquiry into the facts surrounding an alleged debt or requested supporting documentation, such as account applications, billing statements, payment histories, the terms and conditions governing an account, or consumer correspondence, from its clients to corroborate purported debts before filing suit,” the complaint also says.

Moreover, it states “Forster & Garbus does not conduct reviews for contractual disclaimers related to debt sales, even though many of Forster & Garbus's clients are debt buyers.”

Later in the complaint, it says the debt buys include many of the National Collegiate Student Loan Trusts, Asset Acceptance, LLC, and Midland Funding, LLC.

The complaint, under a section on “mass litigation,” also states that “despite maintaining a small roster of attorneys, Forster & Garbus files suits in New York courts on a massive scale.”

Nonattorney support staff try to collect the debt for clients outside of the legal system, but “if the non-attorney personnel do not receive a response from a consumer to demands for payment or an account cannot otherwise be resolved, Forster & Garbus's non-attorney personnel will identify the account as 'suitworthy.'”

Later in the complaint, the CFPB also alleges that name partner Mark Garbus “generally approves for suit more than 90% of the accounts that are presented to him.”

“In his review, he looks for 'obvious' reasons to reject a suit, such as a recent payment on the account or the consumer having filed for bankruptcy,” the complaint says.

Needleman, the lawyer for Forster & Garbus, also argued in her statement that there are no clear directions—or rules of the road—”relating to the so-called 'meaningful attorney involvement' doctrine that is the subject of the CFPB's lawsuit against our firm.”

“The FDCPA [Fair Debt Collection Practices Act] does not define, or even refer to, this 'meaningful attorney involvement' doctrine anywhere in its text, nor is there any binding authority which governs how the doctrine would apply to the legal pleadings at issue here, which were in fact filed by attorneys of our firm,” Needleman said.

She added, “Both Director [Kathy] Kraninger and prior Acting Director [Mick] Mulvaney have acknowledged that the CFPB should not engage in 'regulation by enforcement' yet the filing of this lawsuit against our firm suggests that this unfortunate trend is continuing.”

The CFPB lawsuit asks for injunctive relief stopping Forster & Garbus' practices that violate the FDCPA and the CFPA, as well as damages, redress to consumers, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, and the imposition of a civil money penalty, according to the news release.