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

I’m John DiSalle. I won my own debt-buyer case pro se in Eau Claire County, Wisconsin in April 2026 — Plaza Services LLC v. DiSalle, Case No. 2025SC000885, dismissed April 9, 2026. Wisconsin has a defense surface that most pro se defendants never use. This guide is what I wish I had read the day I was served.

If Cavalry SPV has filed a Wisconsin lawsuit against you, the most important thing to know is that Wisconsin is one of the most defendant-favorable states in the country for debt-buyer cases — but only if you respond before the return date on your summons. Default judgment is the most common outcome of these lawsuits, not because defendants lose on the merits, but because they never appear. Cavalry is a Greenwich, Connecticut debt buyer. Wisconsin’s pleading rule — the Kohl rule, codified at Wis. Stat. § 425.109(1)(h) — is a pleading-stage weapon that most Cavalry complaints cannot survive. The chain-of-title doctrine under Bank of America v. Ofojebe forces the plaintiff to prove every assignment in the chain from the original creditor to Cavalry. The Wisconsin Consumer Act counterclaim under Wis. Stat. § 427.104(1)(j) shifts attorney fees and can produce statutory damages, turning a debt-buyer plaintiff into a defendant facing a fee-shifting counterclaim of its own.

Cavalry SPV I, LLC is a debt-buying entity affiliated with Cavalry Investments, headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut. It is not a bank, not a credit-card issuer, and not your original creditor. It is a special purpose vehicle ("SPV") that exists to acquire portfolios of defaulted consumer debt from original creditors like Citibank, Capital One, Synchrony, Comenity, and HSBC, typically at pennies on the dollar — often three to six cents per dollar of face value. Cavalry then files lawsuits in state courts to collect the full face value of those debts, plus interest, plus costs.

Cavalry entities are frequent defendants in consumer-filed Fair Debt Collection Practices Act lawsuits in federal courts — a public litigation record you can search on court dockets.

Cavalry sued you because (a) your name appears on a portfolio they acquired from an original creditor whose account you had years ago, (b) Wisconsin’s six-year statute of limitations under Wis. Stat. § 893.43 has not facially expired, and (c) Wisconsin’s wage-garnishment process under Chapter 812 allows up to 20% of disposable earnings to be garnished post-judgment for consumer debts. If Cavalry obtains a default judgment, they can begin garnishment within weeks. They are not suing you because they have proof — they are suing you because they have your name on a list and they are betting you will not respond.

You can respond. The Wisconsin defense surface is broader than most defendants realize.

The single most important Wisconsin-specific defense in any consumer debt-buyer case is the Kohl rule.

Wis. Stat. § 425.109(1)-(3) governs the pleading requirements for any action by a creditor to enforce a consumer credit transaction in Wisconsin. The statute requires the complaint to separately itemize the amount sought — distinguishing principal from interest, fees, and other charges — and to attach the operative documents. The case that gave the rule its working name — Household Finance Corp. v. Kohl, 173 Wis. 2d 798, 496 N.W.2d 708 (Ct. App. 1993) — held that the absence of the required itemization is a pleading defect that prevents default judgment and supports dismissal without prejudice. This is not merely a trial defense — it is a face-of-the-pleadings defect.

This is not the rule in most states. In Georgia, in Florida, in Texas, a debt-buyer plaintiff can file a bare-bones complaint asserting a lump-sum balance and force the defendant to dispute it in answer. Wisconsin requires the plaintiff to itemize at the front end. Most Cavalry complaints I have seen in Wisconsin do not satisfy the Kohl rule. They identify the original creditor, list a single balance, and assert assignment. They do not separately itemize principal, interest, fees, and other charges. They do not attach the operative documents that would support the itemization. Under Kohl, that is a pleading defect that prevents default judgment.

A complaint that fails to satisfy § 425.109(1)-(3) is subject to a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim under Wis. Stat. § 802.06(2)(a)6 — or, depending on the procedural posture, an answer asserting failure to state a claim as an affirmative defense. The Kohl rule is the single most powerful Wisconsin-specific weapon in a pro se defendant’s arsenal because it operates at the pleading stage. You do not need to produce evidence. You do not need to take discovery. You point the court at the four corners of the complaint and ask whether it pleads what § 425.109(1)-(3) requires.

This is the lever you start with.

Cavalry filed in Wisconsin Small Claims Court, governed by Wis. Stat. Chapter 799. This is procedurally different from Wisconsin Circuit Court and very different from how Small Claims courts function in other states.

The single feature you must understand is the return date. Your summons names a specific date — typically four to six weeks after service — on which you must appear in person or in writing. There is no separate Answer deadline. There is no pretrial conference scheduled later. The return date is your one shot to put your defenses on the record. If you do not appear by the return date, the court enters a default judgment against you for the full amount Cavalry demanded plus court costs. The case is over.

Under Wis. Stat. § 799.06(2), the return date functions as both the appearance deadline and the answer deadline. You have effectively 20 days from service (or however many days your specific summons gives — read it) to (a) file a written answer with the court before the return date, (b) appear in person on the return date, or (c) both. Most Wisconsin practitioners recommend both.

The hearing on the return date is conducted by a Court Commissioner, not a circuit judge. Court Commissioners in Wisconsin Small Claims hear hundreds of cases per docket. The hearing for your case will last between three and fifteen minutes. The Commissioner will ask whether Cavalry’s attorney is present, whether you are present, and whether you contest the claim. If you say yes and produce a written answer raising the Kohl rule, the chain-of-title defense, the statute of limitations, or any combination, the Commissioner will not enter judgment that day. The case proceeds to a pretrial conference or directly to a contested trial date.

Wisconsin Small Claims has limited discovery by default. Under Wis. Stat. § 799.04(1), the rules of civil procedure apply to Small Claims actions only to the extent they are not inconsistent with Chapter 799. In practice, that means you must affirmatively invoke discovery — written requests for production of documents, written interrogatories, requests for admission — through a motion or a stipulation. Most pro se defendants do not know they can request discovery in Small Claims. Most Cavalry attorneys do not produce documentation until forced to. If you request the original credit-card agreement, the bill of sale evidencing each assignment in the chain, and Cavalry’s account-level transaction records, you will frequently receive nothing back — at which point you ask the court to compel production or dismiss for inability to prove the case.

The return date is not optional. The discovery request is not optional. Both belong in your written answer.

The summons you received names a return date. That is your deadline. Count the days from the date you were served, not the date Cavalry filed the case. Your answer must be filed before the return date, and you must appear on the return date itself.

If you have already missed the return date and a default judgment has been entered against you, Wisconsin still allows relief. Wis. Stat. § 806.07 permits a motion to set aside a default judgment within a reasonable time. The standard is a showing of (a) good cause for the default, and (b) a meritorious defense. The Kohl rule, the chain-of-title attack, and the statute of limitations all qualify as meritorious defenses. Filing a § 806.07 motion within 30 days of default judgment entry significantly improves your chances. After 30 days, the motion is still permitted but the "reasonable time" standard tightens.

If you have been served but the return date has not arrived, your written answer should raise every defense that applies to your case. At minimum, file a general denial under Wis. Stat. § 802.02 and assert the affirmative defenses of failure to state a claim under § 802.06(2)(a)6 (the Kohl rule), statute of limitations under § 893.43, lack of standing (no proof of assignment), failure of consideration (no original credit agreement produced), and any others that apply on the facts of your case. List each defense by name and by statute citation. Do not be brief.

The 20-day window between service and the typical return date is short. It is not a deadline to negotiate with Cavalry. It is a deadline to file with the court.

Cavalry has to prove they own your specific debt before a Wisconsin court can enter judgment in their favor. Most debt-buyer plaintiffs cannot.

Wisconsin’s leading case on debt-buyer standing is Bank of America v. Ofojebe, 2005 WI App 151, 285 Wis. 2d 530, 703 N.W.2d 388. The Wisconsin Court of Appeals held that a plaintiff seeking to enforce a consumer credit obligation must establish, by competent admissible evidence, every link in the chain of assignment from the original creditor to the present plaintiff. A generic bill of sale referencing a "portfolio" is not sufficient. An affidavit from a Cavalry employee attesting to ownership is not sufficient if it is not based on personal knowledge and the underlying records are not produced. The chain must be specific, account-level, and supported by documentation.

This rule pairs with Wisconsin’s business records hearsay exception under Wis. Stat. § 908.03(6). For Cavalry to introduce the original creditor’s account records — the credit-card statements, the charge-off ledger, the underlying account history — those records must qualify as business records of the original creditor, not of Cavalry. Cavalry’s own custodian cannot lay foundation for Citibank’s or Capital One’s records. The plaintiff must produce a custodian from the original creditor or an integrated business records affidavit that satisfies the personal-knowledge requirement. Most Cavalry cases I have seen do not produce this. They produce a Cavalry affidavit referencing an unproduced bill of sale and demand judgment.

Demand the chain. In discovery (or by motion to compel), request: (1) the original signed credit-card agreement between you and the original creditor, (2) the bill of sale for the specific portfolio that includes your account, with the account-level schedule, (3) every intermediate bill of sale if the debt passed through other entities before reaching Cavalry, (4) account-level transaction records from the original creditor showing the charge-off date and balance, and (5) the custodian-of-records affidavit for each set of records produced.

Frequently you will receive partial production — or none. At trial or at a motion hearing, Ofojebe means the plaintiff must produce or lose. Consumer FDCPA lawsuits against Cavalry entities in federal courts have alleged lawsuits with false statements about the existence and amount of documentation. The doctrine and the regulatory record converge.

Wisconsin’s statute of limitations for actions on a contract — including consumer credit-card debt — is six years under Wis. Stat. § 893.43. The clock runs from the date of last activity on the account, typically the charge-off date or the last payment, whichever is later. If Cavalry filed more than six years after that date, the case is time-barred and you raise § 893.43 as an affirmative defense.

But Wisconsin has a borrowing statute most pro se defendants miss: Wis. Stat. § 893.07. If the underlying cause of action accrued in another state — for example, if your credit-card agreement was governed by Delaware law (Citibank, Discover, Barclays, Comenity) or South Dakota law (Capital One has used both) or Virginia law (Capital One subsidiaries) — and that state’s statute of limitations is shorter than Wisconsin’s six years, the shorter SOL applies. Delaware’s SOL on consumer credit-card debt is three years. South Dakota’s is six years. Virginia’s is three years for unwritten contracts and five for written. If your original creditor’s home-state SOL has expired, § 893.07 bars the Wisconsin action even if Wisconsin’s six years have not run.

Cavalry’s portfolio includes substantial inventory from Citibank, Capital One, and HSBC — all of which have used out-of-state choice-of-law provisions in their cardholder agreements. The borrowing statute may be your single most powerful SOL defense if your original creditor is one of these.

Wisconsin also has a pre-expiration revival rule. Under St. Mary’s Hospital Medical Center v. Tarkenton, 103 Wis. 2d 422, 309 N.W.2d 14 (Ct. App. 1981), the statute of limitations is not revived by partial payment, written acknowledgment, or new promise unless that acknowledgment occurs before the SOL has expired. A partial payment Cavalry attempts to use to restart the clock is ineffective if it occurred after the SOL had already run. This matters because Cavalry’s collection attempts frequently include small voluntary payments made years after charge-off, which Cavalry then characterizes as "renewing" the debt. Under Tarkenton, those payments do not.

Compute the dates carefully. The charge-off date appears on the original creditor’s records — request those in discovery. If you computed correctly, plead § 893.43 (and § 893.07 if the borrowing statute applies) as an affirmative defense and as a basis for a Wisconsin Consumer Act counterclaim under § 427.104(1)(j) for collection of a time-barred debt.

This is how my own case ended.

In 2025, I was sued by Plaza Services LLC, a different debt buyer, for $2,892.96 in Eau Claire County Small Claims Court. I had no lawyer. I had never been in a courtroom before. I read my original credit-card agreement carefully. It contained a mandatory arbitration clause requiring all disputes to be resolved through the American Arbitration Association under the AAA Consumer Arbitration Rules. I filed a Motion to Compel Arbitration in Wisconsin Circuit Court. Under those AAA rules, the business claimant (in my case, Plaza Services; in yours, potentially Cavalry) must pay the initial filing fee of $600 for a single arbitrator, $725 for a three-arbitrator panel, within a specific deadline. Plaza Services did not comply with the AAA procedural requirements within the deadline. The court dismissed the case on April 9, 2026.

The same playbook works against Cavalry in Wisconsin. Most consumer credit-card agreements written in the last fifteen years contain a mandatory arbitration clause. Citibank, Capital One, Synchrony, Comenity, HSBC, and most of Cavalry’s other portfolio originators have used arbitration clauses for years. When you file a Motion to Compel Arbitration, the court generally must compel arbitration if a valid agreement exists — under both the Federal Arbitration Act and Wisconsin’s arbitration statutes at Wis. Stat. Chapter 788.

Once the case is in arbitration, three things happen that favor a defendant. First, Cavalry has to pay the AAA filing fees, which run $600 to $725 minimum for the initial filing and substantially more if the case proceeds. For a $2,892 debt or a $4,000 debt or a $7,500 debt, the arbitration cost frequently approaches or exceeds the amount in controversy — and Cavalry’s lawyers are paid contingency-or-near-contingency, not full-rate. Second, AAA procedural requirements impose deadlines on the claimant. If Cavalry misses any of them — payment, filing, response, scheduling — the case is dismissed for failure to prosecute. Third, the arbitration record does not become a public collection judgment, which means even if Cavalry wins it cannot immediately use the result for garnishment without further state-court action.

This is why I filed the Motion to Compel. It was not a Hail Mary. It was an asymmetric leverage move: my filing cost was the cost of paper and a stamp; Cavalry’s compliance cost was the AAA fee plus full participation. Many Cavalry cases settle or dismiss at this stage because the economics do not work for the plaintiff.

If your original credit-card agreement contains an arbitration clause, this is the move I recommend reading about most carefully.

The Wisconsin Consumer Act, codified at Wis. Stat. Chapters 421 through 427, is one of the most defendant-favorable state consumer protection statutes in the United States. The provision that matters most in a Cavalry case is § 427.104(1)(j): "In attempting to collect an alleged debt arising from a consumer credit transaction or other consumer transaction… a debt collector shall not… [c]laim, or attempt or threaten to enforce a right with knowledge or reason to know that the right does not exist."

Cavalry’s act of filing a lawsuit on a debt it cannot prove it owns — that is, a debt where the chain of assignment is unsupported, the original credit agreement is unavailable, the account-level records are missing, or the SOL has expired — falls squarely within § 427.104(1)(j) as enforcement of a right Cavalry has reason to know does not exist (or cannot prove exists).

When a Cavalry case fails on the merits — whether because of Kohl rule pleading failure, Ofojebe chain-of-title failure, statute of limitations, or arbitration dismissal — the case is not over. Wisconsin permits the consumer defendant to plead a counterclaim under the WCA. The remedies are substantial. Wis. Stat. § 425.304(1) provides statutory damages of twice the amount of any finance charge, with a minimum of $100 and a maximum of $1,000 per violation. Wis. Stat. § 425.301 adds actual damages plus, in cases of willful violation, punitive damages. Wis. Stat. § 425.305 permits voiding of the underlying obligation, returning to the consumer any amounts paid. Wis. Stat. § 425.308 awards reasonable attorney fees and costs to a prevailing consumer.

The fee-shifting provision under § 425.308 is the economic threat that matters most. A Cavalry attorney evaluating whether to push a contested Wisconsin case forward has to weigh the chance of recovering $3,000 against the risk of paying the consumer’s attorney fees if the WCA counterclaim prevails. Even in pro se cases, fee-shifting is available where the consumer obtains representation later or where the court applies the statute liberally. The Federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1692 et seq., provides additional fee-shifting on parallel federal claims.

A WCA counterclaim does not require Cavalry to have done anything malicious. It requires showing that Cavalry attempted to enforce a right that did not exist or could not be proved. Wisconsin’s statute supplies the cause of action and the remedy.

In May 2025, Plaza Services LLC filed Eau Claire County Case No. 2025SC000885 against me for $2,892.96 in alleged credit-card debt. I had no lawyer. I had never been in a courtroom before. I read the summons. I read my original credit agreement. I read Wis. Stat. Chapter 425. I drafted a written answer raising the Kohl rule, the chain-of-title defense, and the statute of limitations. I appeared on the return date before Commissioner Johnson. The case did not resolve that day — but it did not default. Over the following months I filed a Motion to Compel Arbitration. The plaintiff failed to comply with AAA procedural requirements within the deadline. The court dismissed the case on April 9, 2026 — without prejudice, meaning Plaza Services could theoretically refile, though they have not.

I learned every Wisconsin Small Claims procedural mechanism by doing it wrong first and then doing it right. The Kohl rule. The Ofojebe chain-of-title requirements. The § 893.43 SOL and the § 893.07 borrowing statute. The § 425.109(1)(h) pleading defects. The Motion to Compel Arbitration mechanics and the AAA fee structure. The WCA counterclaim under § 427.104(1)(j) and the fee-shifting under § 425.308. Almost everything I needed was already in Wisconsin’s statutes and case law — but it was scattered across dozens of sources and none of them was written for someone who had never been to court.

So I built Answered. The platform generates Wisconsin-specific written answers, motions to compel arbitration, motions to dismiss for Kohl rule failure, requests for production of documents under § 799.04(1), and Wisconsin Consumer Act counterclaims tailored to your specific case. It runs through the deadline calculation against your return date. It produces filings you can take to court the same day.

I do not promise anyone they will win their case. I do promise that you will not default for failure to file something. That alone — not defaulting — flips the dynamic against Cavalry. Most Cavalry collection cases are won by default. A defendant who appears, answers, and raises the Kohl rule plus chain-of-title plus a WCA counterclaim creates a case the plaintiff has to choose to litigate or to dismiss. The asymmetric economics in arbitration make dismissal common.

If Cavalry SPV has sued you in Wisconsin, do not ignore the summons. Read it carefully. Compute the return date. File a written answer. Appear. Use the tools below.