Cavalry SPV Is Suing Me in Ohio — What Do I Do?

Cavalry SPV I LLC is a debt buyer headquartered in Valhalla, New York. The company was founded in 1998 and operates alongside its affiliated servicer, Cavalry Portfolio Services LLC, which handles the day-to-day collections work — phone calls, dunning letters, and the local Ohio collection attorneys who file complaints in Ohio Court of Common Pleas and Ohio Municipal Courts across Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, Summit, Montgomery, Lucas, Stark, and the rest of the state. The "SPV" in Cavalry SPV I LLC stands for Special Purpose Vehicle. That is not branding — it is a deliberate entity-structure choice that matters enormously to your Ohio defense, because portfolios of consumer debt frequently move through several Cavalry entities (Cavalry Investments LLC, Cavalry SPV I LLC, Cavalry SPV II LLC, and bankruptcy-remote successor SPVs created for tax and credit reasons) before a complaint is filed against you in an Ohio courtroom.

The single most important fact about Cavalry — the fact that should anchor every Answer you file and every settlement conversation you have with Cavalry’s Ohio collection counsel — is the 2015 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau consent order. That order is one of the largest debt-collection enforcement actions in CFPB history. The CFPB found that Cavalry Portfolio Services and related Cavalry entities had been making false statements in debt-collection lawsuits and collecting on time-barred debts without the disclosures federal law requires. The order required approximately $92 million in consumer relief plus a $10 million civil money penalty. That is a documented federal record of Cavalry doing the very things your Answer is going to accuse them of doing in Ohio Court of Common Pleas.

Cavalry buys credit card debt and auto loan debt at deep discounts from original creditors. The most common original creditors in Cavalry portfolios are Citibank, HSBC, Bank of America, Chase, Capital One, GE Money Bank, and Washington Mutual. Cavalry did not lend you any money. They bought your charged-off account, sometimes for two to eight cents on the dollar, and they are now using the Ohio court system to convert that bargain-basement purchase into a full-balance recovery, plus interest and fees stacked on top.

If you were just served with an Ohio Court of Common Pleas summons (or an Ohio Municipal Court summons for smaller cases) from Cavalry SPV I LLC, here is the sequence of events that almost certainly led to it. Months or years ago, you fell behind on a credit card or auto loan. The original creditor — a bank like Citibank, HSBC, Capital One, or GE Money Bank — eventually charged the account off as a loss. The bank then bundled your account into a portfolio with thousands of other charged-off accounts and sold the portfolio at a deep discount. Cavalry purchased the portfolio, often passing it through one or more SPV entities for accounting and bankruptcy-remoteness reasons. Cavalry is now suing you in Ohio because a default judgment is by far the most efficient way for them to convert that purchase into a full-balance recovery.

The economics of Cavalry’s litigation strategy in Ohio are aggressive. Cavalry is one of the more litigious debt buyers in the state — they file at high volume across Ohio Common Pleas and Municipal Courts, and they push cases hard against defendants who do not respond. CFPB data and Ohio practitioner reports consistently confirm that the majority of consumers sued in debt collection cases never file an Answer. They get scared, they assume the lawsuit will go away on its own, or they simply do not understand how Ohio civil procedure works. When that happens, the Ohio court enters a default judgment, and Cavalry walks away with a court-ordered right to garnish your wages, levy the funds in your bank account, or place a judgment lien on real property you own.

In Ohio, a Cavalry default judgment carries serious consequences. With the judgment in hand, Cavalry can pursue wage garnishment of up to 25% of your disposable earnings under Ohio R.C. 2329.66 and federal law. Cavalry can freeze and levy funds in your Ohio bank account. They can record the judgment as a lien against any real property you own in Ohio. An Ohio judgment is valid for five years and can be renewed and dormancy-revived under R.C. 2329.07, meaning the judgment can follow you for decades. The 2015 CFPB consent order specifically identified this default-judgment-by-attrition pattern as the conduct the bureau acted against — Cavalry obtains judgments by simply showing up, not by proving a clean case.

That is exactly why the moment after you are served, with the 28-day clock under Ohio Civ.R. 12(A)(1) running, is the most important moment in the entire case.

Ohio gives you twenty-eight days to file your Answer after you were served with the summons and complaint. The deadline is set by Ohio Civil Rule 12(A)(1). Twenty-eight days is in the middle of the national range — shorter than the thirty-five-day deadlines in some states, longer than the twenty-day deadlines in others — and Ohio judges expect defendants to use the time well rather than wait until day twenty-seven.

You count the twenty-eight days starting the day after you were served. Weekends and Ohio legal holidays are included in the count under Ohio Civ.R. 6(A). If the twenty-eighth day falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or Ohio legal holiday, the deadline rolls to the next business day. "Served" in Ohio generally means service through certified mail under Ohio Civ.R. 4.1(A) (the most common method in debt-collection cases), personal service by a process server, or — if certified-mail service fails — ordinary mail service under Civ.R. 4.6 or service by publication. Look at the docket and the certified-mail receipt to confirm exactly when service is deemed complete.

If you miss the twenty-eight-day deadline, Cavalry will move for default under Ohio Civ.R. 55(A), and the court will almost certainly grant it. Once the default is entered, undoing it is hard. Ohio courts can vacate a default under Ohio Civ.R. 60(B) for excusable neglect, mistake, or other grounds, but you must file the motion within a reasonable time — and within one year if you are relying on subsections (1), (2), or (3). You must also show a meritorious defense, and the court has full discretion. The Ohio Supreme Court’s GTE Automatic Electric v. ARC Industries test, 47 Ohio St.2d 146 (1976), governs Civ.R. 60(B) motions and is not friendly to defendants who simply ignored the lawsuit.

Mark your deadline on your calendar today. Twenty-eight days from the day after service. Treat that date as the most important date on your calendar until your Answer is filed and stamped by the clerk.

This is the question that defeats more Cavalry cases in Ohio Court of Common Pleas than any other defense, and Ohio law gives Cavalry defendants two very strong tools to use against the SPV structure.

The first tool is Ohio Civil Rule 10(D)(1). The rule requires that when a claim is founded on an account, "a copy of the account or written instrument" must be attached to the pleading. In an account-stated case, the attached account must show the actual transactions and running balance — not just a one-line summary. The seminal Ohio case on what counts as a sufficient account is Asset Acceptance Corp. v. Proctor, 156 Ohio App.3d 60, 2004-Ohio-623. Proctor sets a four-element provable-sum test: the attached account must show a starting zero balance (or the account opening point), itemized debits and credits, a running balance reflecting the transactions, and an ending balance that matches what the plaintiff is suing for. Cavalry complaints in Ohio frequently attach a one-page summary statement that fails the Proctor test on its face.

The second tool — and this is the one that Cavalry’s SPV structure makes especially vulnerable to — is R.C. 1319.12(C). Ohio law requires that a collection-agency plaintiff suing on an assigned account attach to the complaint a written assignment specifying the effective date of the assignment and the consideration paid. Read that carefully. Effective date and consideration paid. A bulk portfolio bill of sale that does not name your specific account, that does not state the consideration paid for your specific account, and that does not establish the effective date of the transfer to Cavalry SPV I LLC is not enough under R.C. 1319.12(C). Cavalry’s portfolios frequently pass through several SPV entities — Cavalry Investments LLC, Cavalry SPV I LLC, downstream SPVs — and R.C. 1319.12(C) applies at every transfer. Each missing or generic assignment is a separate ground to dismiss.

The Ohio Seventh District Court of Appeals confirmed the application of these rules to debt-buyer cases in Midland Credit Mgt. v. Bowers, 2025-Ohio-2578 (7th Dist.). The decision reinforces that Ohio courts will scrutinize debt-buyer pleadings for compliance with Civ.R. 10(D)(1) and R.C. 1319.12(C), and will not paper over defects with a custodian affidavit.

The 2015 CFPB consent order is directly relevant here. The bureau specifically faulted Cavalry for false statements in court filings and for using affidavits that asserted facts the affiant could not personally verify. Ohio judges weighing your motion to dismiss for failure to satisfy Civ.R. 10(D)(1) and R.C. 1319.12(C) — or your objection to a Cavalry Portfolio Services custodian’s affidavit — now have a documented federal record of exactly that pattern.

Every legal claim has a deadline by which the plaintiff must sue, and once that deadline expires the claim is "time-barred." For credit card debt and most consumer accounts in Ohio, the statute of limitations is six years under Ohio R.C. § 2305.07. If Cavalry waited too long after you stopped paying, your debt may be too old to collect — but only if you raise this defense yourself in your Answer.

The clock starts running on the date of your last payment on the account. If you made your last payment on March 15, 2018, the six-year clock began on March 15, 2018, and expired on March 15, 2024. A Cavalry lawsuit filed in May 2024 on that account would be filed outside the limitations period and would be time-barred under R.C. § 2305.07. If you cannot remember your exact last-payment date, look at your old credit reports — payment history is usually visible going back several years — or request the original creditor’s account records through formal discovery once your Answer is filed.

The 2015 CFPB consent order against Cavalry is directly on point. The bureau’s findings were not abstract — they were specifically that Cavalry had been collecting on time-barred debts without the federally required disclosures. That federal record is admissible evidence of pattern conduct in support of an Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act counterclaim under R.C. 1345.02. When you raise the six-year SOL in your Ohio Answer and pair it with a CSPA counterclaim citing the consent order, the documentary record of Cavalry’s federal enforcement history becomes part of your case.

The statute of limitations is what Ohio lawyers call an "affirmative defense." It does not happen automatically. The court will not throw out the case on its own just because the debt is old. You must plead it in your Answer under Ohio Civ.R. 8(C) or you waive it — and Cavalry walks away with a judgment on debt the federal government has already said they should not have been collecting. There is also a separate, narrower borrowing-statute analysis under R.C. 2305.03 that can apply when an out-of-state account is involved; if your account was opened or governed by another state’s law, calculate carefully or have Answered run the analysis.

Most credit card agreements contain a clause requiring that any dispute be resolved through binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association or JAMS. When Cavalry purchased your account, they purchased it subject to whatever terms were in the original cardholder agreement — which means the arbitration clause may now belong to you as a defense in Ohio Court of Common Pleas.

Ohio gives defendants a particularly strong arbitration tool. Under Ohio R.C. 2711.02, when a party shows that the dispute is referable to arbitration under a written agreement, the court must stay the proceeding pending arbitration. Critically, R.C. 2711.02(C) provides that an order denying a stay is immediately appealable as a final order. That right of immediate appeal is rare in Ohio civil procedure and gives defendants enormous leverage — even if the trial court initially denies the motion, you can appeal without waiting for final judgment, which Cavalry strongly wants to avoid.

The Ohio Seventh District Court of Appeals confirmed that this framework applies to debt-buyer cases in Midland Credit Mgt. v. Bowers, 2025-Ohio-2578 (7th Dist.). The decision reinforces the mandatory-stay nature of R.C. 2711.02 in collection litigation when a valid arbitration clause exists.

This is one of the most powerful and least-used tools for Ohio Cavalry defendants, and the reason is counterintuitive. Even though the arbitration clause is enforceable by either side, debt buyers like Cavalry usually do not want to arbitrate. AAA and JAMS commercial filing fees for a business claimant typically run from $1,500 to $5,000 or more before any work has been done, plus the arbitrator’s hourly rate. If Cavalry is suing you for, say, $3,200, the cost of arbitration may exceed the recoverable amount.

This dynamic is sometimes called the "arbitration fee trap." When an Ohio defendant files a motion to stay under R.C. 2711.02 and the court grants it, Cavalry must choose between paying thousands of dollars in arbitration filing fees up front or abandoning the case. They very often abandon. To use this defense effectively, you generally need a copy of the original cardholder agreement showing the arbitration clause. Cavalry must produce that document if you request it in discovery. This is an advanced strategy and one of the situations where Answered’s playbook system can walk you through the procedural steps.

Your Answer is the most important document you will file in the entire case. It is your formal response to Cavalry’s complaint, and it locks in your defenses for the rest of the lawsuit. A good Answer in Ohio does three things: it admits or denies each numbered allegation as required by Ohio Civ.R. 8(B), it raises every applicable affirmative defense under Civ.R. 8(C), and — where the facts support it — it raises a counterclaim under the Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act.

For the admit-or-deny portion, the Ohio rule is simple: do not admit anything you do not actually know to be true. Under Ohio Civ.R. 8(B), you may state that you are without knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to the truth of an averment, and that statement has the effect of a denial. If Cavalry alleges that you owed Citibank exactly $4,217.42 as of a charge-off date you do not specifically remember, deny that allegation for lack of knowledge. Admitting allegations you cannot personally verify hands Cavalry elements of their case for free.

The affirmative defenses to consider raising in an Ohio Cavalry Answer include lack of standing (Cavalry cannot prove account-level ownership through the SPV chain); failure to comply with Ohio Civ.R. 10(D)(1) and the four-element provable-sum test of Asset Acceptance Corp. v. Proctor, 156 Ohio App.3d 60, 2004-Ohio-623; failure to attach a written assignment specifying the effective date and consideration paid as required by R.C. 1319.12(C) — devastating for the SPV-to-SPV transfers Cavalry relies on; statute of limitations under Ohio R.C. § 2305.07 if your last payment was more than six years before suit; failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted under Civ.R. 12(B)(6); account stated cannot be established because Cavalry cannot prove an agreement on a specific balance; lack of foundation for any business-records affidavit; and arbitration under R.C. 2711.02 if the original cardholder agreement contains a clause. Where the facts support it, plead an Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act counterclaim under R.C. 1345.02 citing Taylor v. First Resolution Investment Corp., 148 Ohio St.3d 627, 2016-Ohio-3444, and the 2015 CFPB consent order as evidence of Cavalry’s pattern conduct.

What you should never do in Ohio: do not admit you owe the debt. Do not call Cavalry Portfolio Services to "explain your situation" — anything you say can and will be used against you. Do not promise to pay or sign any settlement document before your Answer is filed. Do not ignore the lawsuit and hope it disappears. The 28-day clock under Ohio Civ.R. 12(A)(1) is unforgiving, and Ohio Court of Common Pleas will not extend it because you were busy, scared, or unsure what to do.

Ohio has one of the strongest consumer protection statutes in the country for debt collection defendants, and most consumers being sued by Cavalry have no idea it exists. The Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act, codified at R.C. 1345.01 through 1345.99, gives you tools that go well beyond simply defending the lawsuit — it gives you affirmative recovery rights against Cavalry.

The core provision is R.C. 1345.02, which prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices by suppliers in connection with consumer transactions. The single most important Ohio Supreme Court decision on the CSPA in the debt-buyer context is Taylor v. First Resolution Investment Corp., 148 Ohio St.3d 627, 2016-Ohio-3444. Taylor holds that debt buyers and their collection attorneys are CSPA "suppliers" — meaning the act applies directly to Cavalry SPV I LLC, Cavalry Portfolio Services LLC, and the local collection attorneys filing on Cavalry’s behalf in Ohio courts. A defective collection lawsuit — one that violates Ohio Civ.R. 10(D)(1), R.C. 1319.12(C), or the statute of limitations — can itself be a deceptive act under the CSPA.

The damages provisions of the Ohio CSPA are powerful. Under R.C. 1345.09, a consumer can recover actual damages, plus either treble actual damages or two hundred dollars per violation — whichever is greater — for knowing violations. R.C. 1345.09(F) makes attorney’s fees mandatory when the supplier knowingly committed an act or practice that violates the CSPA. That fee-shift is the financial mechanism that converts an Ohio CSPA counterclaim from a defensive talking point into a real risk Cavalry must factor in. The 2015 CFPB consent order — about $92 million in consumer relief plus the $10 million civil money penalty — is admissible evidence of Cavalry’s knowing pattern of misconduct in support of the CSPA counterclaim. Ohio judges weighing whether Cavalry "knowingly" violated the CSPA will recognize the federal record of false statements in court filings and collecting on time-barred debts.

In addition to the Ohio CSPA, the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act applies to Cavalry SPV and Cavalry Portfolio Services. The FDCPA prohibits false statements, misrepresentations of the amount or character of the debt, and abusive collection tactics, and provides up to $1,000 in statutory damages plus attorney’s fees in federal court. The combination of Ohio CSPA fee-shifting and treble damages, FDCPA statutory damages, and the documented 2015 CFPB enforcement record is the reason Cavalry routinely settles or dismisses Ohio cases when they see a real Answer raising these defenses.

After you file your Answer with the clerk of the Ohio Court of Common Pleas (or the Ohio Municipal Court for smaller cases) and serve a copy on Cavalry’s collection counsel, the case enters discovery. Discovery is the formal process by which each side requests documents and information from the other under the Ohio Rules of Civil Procedure.

In a Cavalry case, discovery is where the chain-of-title and assignment defenses get tested under R.C. 1319.12(C) and Asset Acceptance Corp. v. Proctor. You — or Answered’s discovery templates on your behalf — can serve a request for production of documents under Ohio Civ.R. 34 demanding every assignment document specifying effective date and consideration paid, every bill of sale, every SPV-to-SPV transfer agreement, the original cardholder agreement, and the complete account history from the original creditor. Cavalry must respond within twenty-eight days under Civ.R. 34(B). If they cannot produce a clean account-level chain of title from the original creditor through every Cavalry entity to Cavalry SPV I LLC, plus an authenticated business record from a witness with personal knowledge of how the records were created, their case is in real trouble.

What very often happens next is a settlement offer. The economics for Cavalry change dramatically once they realize they are facing an Ohio defendant who has read Civ.R. 10(D)(1), R.C. 1319.12(C), Proctor, and Taylor, and who is going to make Cavalry actually prove its case. Ohio practitioners report that debt buyers commonly settle real-Answer cases for forty to sixty cents on the dollar, sometimes less. Settlement offers in Ohio usually come from Cavalry’s collection counsel rather than from Cavalry Portfolio Services collectors directly.

If the case does not settle, it proceeds toward trial. Ohio small claims procedure handles cases up to $6,000 with simplified rules in the Municipal Court small claims division. For amounts above $6,000, the case proceeds in Ohio Municipal Court (jurisdictional cap typically $15,000) or the Ohio Court of Common Pleas for larger cases, following the full Ohio Rules of Civil Procedure.

The realistic outcome spectrum looks like this. A meaningful share of Cavalry cases get voluntarily dismissed by Cavalry after discovery, especially when the chain of title fails R.C. 1319.12(C) at the SPV transfers or when the attached account fails the Proctor four-element test. Many more settle for a deeply discounted lump sum. A smaller share go to trial. Defendants who file real Answers raising Civ.R. 10(D)(1), R.C. 1319.12(C), the six-year SOL, the Ohio CSPA, and the 2015 CFPB consent order win or settle far more often than defendants who default.

Answered is a self-help legal platform built specifically for people like you — pro se defendants in Ohio consumer debt collection lawsuits. The Ohio playbook was reviewed by an Ohio-licensed consumer-rights attorney and is built around the specific Ohio Rules of Civil Procedure, statutes, and case law that govern Cavalry cases in the Ohio Court of Common Pleas and Ohio Municipal Courts.

When you upload your summons and complaint, Answered does the following. It extracts the key dates, including your service date and your 28-day Answer deadline under Ohio Civ.R. 12(A)(1). It scans the complaint for the procedural defects most commonly found in Cavalry pleadings, including missing chain-of-title documents across the SPV-to-SPV transfers, generic bulk bills of sale that fail R.C. 1319.12(C)’s effective-date and consideration-paid requirements, attached accounts that fail the four-element provable-sum test of Asset Acceptance v. Proctor, and generic affidavits from Cavalry Portfolio Services custodians. It identifies whether your debt may be time-barred under the six-year SOL of R.C. § 2305.07. It checks whether an arbitration clause is likely available under R.C. 2711.02 given the original creditor. And it generates a court-ready Answer with the affirmative defenses that apply to your specific case, including specific reference to the 2015 CFPB consent order where the facts support it.

The Answer document is formatted for the Ohio Court of Common Pleas or Ohio Municipal Court, includes the proper caption and case style, and contains the affirmative defenses and — where the facts support it — Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act counterclaim language under R.C. 1345.02 with citation to Taylor v. First Resolution Investment Corp., 148 Ohio St.3d 627, 2016-Ohio-3444. It also generates a discovery request package under Ohio Civ.R. 34 designed to push Cavalry to produce — or fail to produce — the chain-of-title documents R.C. 1319.12(C) requires.

Pricing is simple. Free to start, and a one-time $99 charge to unlock and download your final documents. No subscription. No per-document fee. If you also want Answered to print, sign, and mail your Answer to the Ohio court via certified mail with return receipt, that service is available for an additional flat fee — and certified-mail filing in Ohio gives you a documented filing record that helps you prove timely compliance with the 28-day Civ.R. 12(A)(1) deadline.

This product exists because the founder, John DiSalle, was sued by a debt buyer, researched his own defense end-to-end, and built Answered from that experience so other Ohio defendants do not have to assemble it from scratch.