Jury Hands Down $1.5 million Verdict Against Debt Collection Agency

A collection agency based in Pennsylvania was on the losing end of a huge jury award Friday as a result of some harassing phone calls and messages the company used to collect a debt.

Texas resident Allen Jones sued Advanced Call Center Technologies, LLC in a Dallas County court after the company left eight messages laced with profanity and racial invective. The ARM firm had been calling on a $200 debt that Jones claimed he did not owe. Jones kept the recordings of the messages and entered them into evidence during the trial.

A jury Friday awarded Jones $50,000 in mental anguish damages and hit Advanced Call Center Technologies with a staggering $1.5 million in punitive damages.

In a statement to insideARM.com, Advanced Call Center Technologies acknowledged the verdict and said that “nobody should be subject to such treatment by anyone.”

“If true, these actions were perpetrated by an individual no longer employed by the Company who would have behaved well outside the scope of our business and on their own accord,” the company said in a statement. “These calls appeared to have been a personal attack on Mr. Jones by an individual unrelated to the Company’s business and certainly would not have been authorized or condoned by Company Management.  The Company maintains rigorous quality and compliance standards by which we conduct our business every day and these actions do not represent in any way the values, integrity, and professionalism upon which our Company is built.”

The company has not decided whether it will appeal the case or the amount of the award.

An attorney for Jones told Dallas TV station WFAA, "This is absolutely, without a doubt, the most egregious collection case I’ve ever seen."