Getting the Funder Records in a Washington MCA Defense

The best arguments need the other side's paperwork

A recurring theme in defending these claims is arithmetic: what was advanced, what was actually collected, what the agreement permitted, what is now demanded. Those four figures ought to reconcile, and when they do not, the discrepancy is the most durable thing a defendant has.

The difficulty is that a business only holds half the record.

Your bank statements show money arriving and money leaving. They do not show how the funder characterised each debit, how it applied fees, what it recorded as a missed payment, what it did with a reconciliation request, or how it arrived at the figure in the complaint. That lives in the funder's own system.

The mechanism

CPLR § 3101 sets the scope of disclosure in New York. Subdivision (a) provides that there shall be full disclosure of all matter material and necessary in the prosecution or defense of an action, regardless of the burden of proof.

That is a broad formulation. What it produces in a particular case depends on what is sought, how it is framed, and what the court considers material and necessary there — none of which this page is in a position to predict. The point is that there is a route, and that the route is a normal part of defending a case rather than an exotic step.

What is worth asking for

Thinking in categories rather than in document names:

The ledger for the advance. The funder's own running account: amounts advanced, amounts collected, dates, balances as it calculated them.

Every debit attempted. Not only those that succeeded. Returned and re-presented debits often carry fees, and the pattern of attempts is itself informative.

How fees and charges were applied. Which charge, under which clause, on what date, for what event.

Reconciliation correspondence. Any request to adjust the remittance, any response, any internal note recording the decision.

The assignment chain. If the plaintiff is not the funder you dealt with, the documents by which it says it acquired the position.

Put beside your own statements, those records either corroborate the demand or they do not.

Why this matters more than it sounds

Most of the arguments available in this area fall into two groups.

There are the characterisation and venue arguments — is it a loan, should the case be here. Those are contested, slow, and depend on law rather than documents.

Then there are the arithmetic arguments — this is not what you were entitled to take, these fees were not triggered, this balance does not follow from these transactions. Those are faster, harder to answer, and do not require persuading anyone of a legal proposition.

The second group is only available to a defendant who gets the records. Which makes disclosure the step that converts the whole second category from theory into evidence.

And it only exists inside a case

This is the practical constraint and it is absolute.

Disclosure is part of litigation. A business that has not appeared is not in a position to demand anything, and CPLR § 320 gives it twenty days after service of the summons to appear — by answer, by notice of appearance, or by a motion extending the time to answer — with longer periods in defined circumstances including particular methods of service.

Where that passes, CPLR § 3215 allows the plaintiff to seek a default judgment, with the clerk able to enter one for a sum certain on the requisite proof. A default judgment is the outcome in which nobody ever looks at the funder's ledger.

What to do first, from Washington

1. Assemble your half — every statement from funding to the last debit.
2. Write down what you think the correct figure is, and why.
3. List what you cannot see from your own records. That list is the start of a disclosure request.
4. Appear within the deadline. None of this exists outside the case.

How an MCA lawsuit is defended covers the course of a defended matter.