Scott D. Owens

Attorney Scott D. Owens was raised in Amherst, New York (a suburb of Buffalo) and graduated from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo in 1996. Later, Scott made his way to Boston where he received a Juris Doctorate from the New England School of Law in 2000.

From 2002-2003, Attorney Owens worked at a major creditor's rights firm in South Florida. During that time frame, he litigated on behalf of the same companies that he opposes today (i.e. Chase/MBNA, Capital One Bank, Providian National Bank, Bank of America, etc.). Attorney Owens realized that the vast majority of people had no legal representation and those attorneys who did show up to court simply acquiesced to the matter and rarely defended the lawsuit on the merits. Scott believes that his experience on the other side of the aisle provides him with a unique understanding as to the inner workings of the collections industry.

In 2005, Mr. Owens formed the law firm of Cohen & Owens, P.A in Hollywood, Florida. One of the first cases which the firm took on involved a young woman whose life was turned upside down by a large national bank. Although she was a victim of account fraud, her credit card company reported her account as delinquent and put her into collections. The bank had summarily ignored the fact that she had filed a police report and provided the bank with multiple fraud affidavits. Attorney Owens, on behalf of his client, sued the bank seeking approximately $200,000.00 dollars in damages. After prevailing against the bank at the appellate level (on the issue of arbitration), the case was later settled for an undisclosed amount. Today, Mr. Owens practices almost exclusively in the area of consumer law, which in addition to defending consumer debt collection lawsuits also includes:

• Violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act ("FDCPA") and the Florida Consumer Collection Practices Act ("FCCPA")
• Violations of the Florida Mechanic's Lien Law
  (i.e. Unlawful Construction Liens)
• Foreclosure Defense
• Tenant Eviction Defense and Tenant Security Deposit Litigation

Attorney Owens is a member of several prominent legal organizations including the National Association of Consumer Advocates (“NACA” www.naca.net ). As a consumer attorney, Mr. Owens travels around the country attending various seminars to keep abreast of this rapidly evolving area of law.

“At Cohen & Owens, we do not work from 9-5;

we work from beginning to end.”