Portfolio Recovery Associates 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 Portfolio Recovery Associates 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. PRA is a Norfolk, Virginia debt buyer — a wholly owned subsidiary of PRA Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: PRAA) — that has been the subject of two federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau enforcement actions: a 2015 consent order requiring $19 million in consumer redress plus an $8 million civil money penalty, and a 2023 amended consent order imposing an additional $24 million settlement for continued violations of the 2015 terms. Both consent orders are admissible evidence in your case. Wisconsin’s pleading rule — the Kohl rule, codified at Wis. Stat. § 425.109(1)(h) — is a pleading-stage weapon that most PRA 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 PRA. The Wisconsin Consumer Act counterclaim under Wis. Stat. § 427.104(1)(j) shifts attorney fees and can produce statutory damages, turning PRA from plaintiff into a defendant facing fee-shifted exposure of its own.

Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC ("PRA") is a debt-buying subsidiary of PRA Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: PRAA), one of the two largest publicly traded debt buyers in the United States. PRA is headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, and files thousands of consumer-collection lawsuits each year, with a heavy calendar in Wisconsin Circuit Court Small Claims and Civil divisions. It is not a bank, not a credit-card issuer, and not your original creditor. PRA acquires portfolios of defaulted consumer debt at pennies on the dollar — typically four to six cents per dollar of face value — and litigates to collect the full face value plus interest plus costs.

PRA’s portfolio is concentrated in defaulted consumer credit-card accounts purchased from major card issuers. The primary sources are Synchrony Bank — the issuer behind major store-card programs including Amazon, Lowe’s, Care Credit, JC Penney, Walmart, and dozens of other retailers — and Capital One. Smaller but recurring positions come from Comenity/Bread Financial store-card portfolios and Citibank. This concentration matters in Wisconsin because Synchrony cardholder agreements are governed by Utah law, Comenity by Delaware law, and Capital One by Virginia or South Dakota law depending on the subsidiary — and the Wis. Stat. § 893.07 borrowing statute may pull the shorter foreign-state SOLs into your case.

The CFPB enforcement record against PRA is more extensive than against any other major debt buyer. In September 2015, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered PRA Group and Portfolio Recovery Associates to pay $19 million in consumer redress plus an $8 million civil money penalty. The 2015 consent order found that PRA had filed collection lawsuits with false statements about the existence and amount of documentation, used affidavits from custodians without personal knowledge of the underlying accounts, and collected on debts past the statute of limitations. In March 2023, the CFPB filed a second action — an amended consent order — for $24 million, finding that PRA had violated the terms of the 2015 order by continuing to collect on debts without adequate documentation and continuing to sue without verifying the underlying facts. Both consent orders are public records. Both are admissible evidence in any Wisconsin case where PRA is the plaintiff.

PRA 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 on the most recent date of activity, 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 PRA obtains a default judgment, they can begin garnishment within weeks. They are not suing you because they have proof — the CFPB has now twice found that they routinely sue without it. 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, and PRA’s twin CFPB record makes the substantive defenses load-bearing rather than speculative.

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 PRA complaints I have seen in Wisconsin do not satisfy the Kohl rule. They identify the original creditor (typically Synchrony Bank or Capital One), 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. The CFPB’s 2015 consent order findings — that PRA filed lawsuits with false statements about documentation — make the Kohl rule pleading defect not just an isolated procedural error but a documented pattern of PRA’s litigation practice. Under Kohl, that pattern 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.

PRA 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 PRA 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 PRA’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 PRA collection 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 PRA’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 PRA 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 PRA. It is a deadline to file with the court.

PRA has to prove they own your specific debt before a Wisconsin court can enter judgment in their favor. The CFPB has now twice found — in 2015 and again in 2023 — that PRA routinely 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 PRA 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 PRA 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 PRA. PRA’s own custodian cannot lay foundation for Synchrony’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 PRA cases I have seen do not produce this. They produce a PRA affidavit referencing an unproduced bill of sale and demand judgment.

The CFPB’s 2015 consent order makes this finding explicit: PRA filed thousands of collection lawsuits supported by affidavits from custodians without personal knowledge of the underlying accounts. The 2023 amended consent order found that PRA continued the same practice after agreeing to stop. The doctrine and the regulatory record converge: under Wisconsin law, the foundation is required; under federal regulatory finding, PRA has been twice sanctioned for not providing it.

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 PRA, (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. The twin CFPB consent orders against PRA make this risk not theoretical but documented.

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 PRA 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 Utah law (Synchrony Bank cards, including the major retailer store cards), Delaware law (Comenity/Bread Financial cards, Citibank, Discover, Barclays), South Dakota law (Capital One has used both Virginia and South Dakota), or Virginia law (some 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 contract claims is three years under 10 Del. C. § 8106. Utah’s SOL on credit-card debt is generally shorter than Wisconsin’s six-year limit. 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.

PRA’s portfolio is heavily concentrated in Synchrony — by far PRA’s largest single source of inventory. If PRA is suing you on a Synchrony account, the Utah-law choice-of-law provision in the Synchrony cardholder agreement triggers § 893.07 analysis, not Wisconsin’s six-year default. Same analysis applies to Capital One, Comenity/Bread Financial, and the other foreign-law-governed cards that round out PRA’s portfolio. 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 PRA attempts to use to restart the clock is ineffective if it occurred after the SOL had already run. This matters because PRA’s collection attempts frequently include small voluntary payments made years after charge-off, which PRA 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. The CFPB’s 2015 consent order found PRA collected on time-barred debts; § 893.07 may show your case is one of them.

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 PRA) must pay the initial filing fee 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 PRA in Wisconsin. Most consumer credit-card agreements written in the last fifteen years contain a mandatory arbitration clause. Synchrony Bank, Capital One, Comenity/Bread Financial, Citibank — all of PRA’s major 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, PRA has to pay the AAA business filing fees, which run $1,500 to $5,000 or more for the initial filing and substantially more if the case proceeds. For a $2,000, $4,000, or $7,500 alleged debt, the arbitration cost frequently approaches or exceeds the amount in controversy. Second, AAA procedural requirements impose deadlines on the claimant. If PRA 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 PRA 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 paper and a stamp; the plaintiff’s compliance cost was the AAA fee plus full participation. Many debt-buyer cases settle or dismiss at this stage because the economics do not work for the plaintiff. PRA, as a publicly traded company answerable to shareholders on collection-per-case margin, has particular reasons to abandon cases where arbitration costs exceed expected recovery.

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 PRA 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."

PRA’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 PRA has reason to know does not exist (or cannot prove exists). The twin CFPB consent orders against PRA make this finding non-speculative: in 2015, the CFPB found that PRA filed lawsuits with false statements about documentation and collected on time-barred debts; in 2023, the CFPB found PRA had continued the same conduct after agreeing to stop. Pattern conduct is what § 427.104(1)(j) targets, and the CFPB has now twice put PRA’s pattern on the federal record.

When a PRA case fails on the merits — whether because of Kohl rule pleading failure, Ofojebe chain-of-title failure, statute of limitations (including § 893.07 borrowing-statute failure), 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 PRA collection 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 — and PRA, as a publicly traded company with two CFPB consent orders already on its record, has additional reputational exposure that a privately held debt buyer does not. 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 PRA to have done anything malicious. It requires showing that PRA attempted to enforce a right that did not exist or could not be proved. The CFPB has twice put on the federal record that PRA does exactly this systemically. 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.

The Plaza case was a different debt buyer than PRA, but the doctrine is the same. PRA buys defaulted credit-card debt at deep discounts — primarily from Synchrony Bank, with Capital One and Comenity/Bread Financial as secondary sources. PRA files in Wisconsin Circuit Court Small Claims Division. PRA’s complaints typically fail the Kohl rule’s itemization requirement. PRA’s affidavits typically fail the Ofojebe chain-of-title requirement and the § 908.03(6) business-records foundation requirement. PRA’s SOL exposure on Synchrony portfolios is the Utah-law limit imported via § 893.07, not Wisconsin’s six. PRA’s twin CFPB consent orders are admissible evidence of the same conduct in your case.

What is different about PRA is the public record. PRA Group is publicly traded on NASDAQ (PRAA). The 2015 and 2023 CFPB consent orders are public documents. The CFPB findings against PRA — false statements in court filings, collection on time-barred debts, affidavit signing without account review — are admissible federal-agency conclusions about PRA’s pattern of practice. Wisconsin courts can take judicial notice of the consent orders. A WCA counterclaim under § 427.104(1)(j) becomes substantively stronger when the conduct it alleges is independently documented by a federal agency.

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 the deadline calculation against your return date. It produces filings you can take to court the same day. The WCA counterclaim is a standalone product step — a $49 add-on that turns the case from "defend" into "counterclaim against PRA," with the federal CFPB record as supporting evidence.

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 PRA. Most PRA 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 PRA has to choose to litigate or to dismiss. The asymmetric economics in arbitration make dismissal common.

If Portfolio Recovery Associates 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.