If you got served with a debt-collection lawsuit in Pinellas County last year, you were not alone — not by a long shot. We pulled the 2025 filing records from the Pinellas County court and counted every debt case brought by the area’s most active collectors. Seventeen of them filed 14,314 lawsuits against local residents in a single year. That’s roughly 55 new debt suits every business day, in one Florida county. I’m Michael Ziegler, and I’ve spent 13 years on the other side of these cases — defending Floridians against exactly these filers.
Here’s what the data shows, and what it means if your name is on one of those summonses.
What we did
We reviewed 2025 civil filings in Pinellas County for the highest-volume consumer debt collectors — the banks and debt-buying companies that sue local residents over credit cards and charged-off accounts. We pulled each filer’s case count and split it by court type: small claims versus county civil. This isn’t a survey or an estimate. It’s a straight count of public court records for the 2025 calendar year. (A short note on method is at the bottom.)
The 14,314 lawsuits
Across the 17 most active filers, here’s how 2025 broke down (each name links to what to do if that company is suing you):
| Rank | Who filed | 2025 lawsuits |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Capital One | 2,613 |
| 2 | LVNV Funding | 2,208 |
| 3 | Portfolio Recovery Associates | 1,577 |
| 4 | Midland Credit Management | 1,539 |
| 5 | Bank of America | 962 |
| 6 | JPMorgan Chase | 819 |
| 7 | Velocity Investments | 764 |
| 8 | Synchrony Bank | 733 |
| 9 | American Express | 662 |
| 10 | Discover Bank | 559 |
| 11 | Crown Asset Management | 516 |
| 12 | Wells Fargo | 447 |
| 13 | Cavalry SPV | 423 |
| 14 | Citibank | 366 |
| 15 | Jefferson Capital Systems | 81 |
| 16 | Absolute Resolutions | 30 |
| 17 | Resurgent Receivables | 15 |
One company, Capital One, filed more than 2,600 lawsuits by itself. The top four filers together account for nearly 8,000 cases — more than half the total. If you’re being sued by a name near the top of that list, understand that you are one file in a very large, very routine pipeline. That’s not meant to scare you. It’s the opposite: these are high-volume operations, and high-volume operations cut corners. Corners are where defenses live.
Debt buyers vs. the original banks
Here’s the split that surprised even me. The 14,314 lawsuits divide almost exactly in half:
- Original creditors (the banks whose card you actually used — Capital One, Bank of America, Chase, Synchrony, Amex, Discover, Wells Fargo, Citibank): about 7,161 cases.
- Debt buyers (companies that bought your charged-off account for pennies and now sue in their own name — LVNV, Portfolio Recovery, Midland, Velocity, Crown, Cavalry, Jefferson, and others): about 7,153 cases.
So half the people sued over debt in Pinellas last year were sued by a company they’ve never done business with. That matters, because a debt buyer has to prove it actually owns your specific account — the paper trail from the original bank to itself, account by account. That chain is often incomplete. If a company you don’t recognize is suing you, read our guide on what happens when your debt has been sold, and see our pages on the specific filers we defend against most, including LVNV Funding, Cavalry SPV, and CACH, LLC. There’s a fuller list on our Florida debt collection companies page.
Most of these are small-claims cases
Nearly three out of four of the 2025 lawsuits — 73.8% — were filed in small claims court, meaning the amount sued for was $8,000 or less. The single most common case was for a relatively modest sum, in the $501 to $2,500 range.
Don’t let “small” fool you. A $1,800 lawsuit you ignore becomes a $1,800 default judgment, and a judgment is what lets a creditor try to garnish your wages or freeze your bank account. Most of the worst outcomes I see didn’t happen because someone lost in court — they happened because someone never responded at all. Here’s what happens after a judgment is entered, and why the 20 days after you’re served matter more than almost anything else.
The filings are climbing
This isn’t a shrinking problem. Filings rose steadily across 2025 — from about 3,100 in the first quarter to nearly 4,000 in the fourth, a 28% jump. December was the single busiest month of the year. Whatever’s driving it — rates, balances, post-holiday collections — the trend in Pinellas is up, not down.
What to do if one of them sued you
If your name is on one of these 14,314 cases, three things are true at once: this is routine, you have a deadline, and you have options. Being sued is not the same as losing. In Florida you generally have 20 days from the date you’re served to file a written response, and doing that alone changes the whole posture of the case.
For more than a decade, our firm has defended Floridians against these exact filers — we’ve handled thousands of consumer debt matters and even won at the federal appellate level (Daniels v. SPS). Depending on your situation, the right move might be to fight the case on the merits, to negotiate a documented settlement, or — when one lawsuit is really the first of several coming — to wipe the slate through bankruptcy. We handle collection lawsuits, bankruptcy, credit-reporting errors, and collection harassment under one roof, so the advice you get isn’t limited to one tool. Start with our overview of debt collection lawsuit defense in Florida, and if the suit is over an old credit card, read about the Florida credit card lawsuit time limits that may apply.
Whatever you do, don’t do nothing. That’s the one choice that turns a routine lawsuit into a judgment.
A note on the data
These figures come from Pinellas County’s 2025 civil court records, counted by named plaintiff across small claims and county civil filings for the calendar year. The 14,314 total reflects the 17 highest-volume consumer debt collectors filing in the county; it is not a count of every debt case filed. Figures are filing counts only and do not reflect case outcomes.
Journalists, researchers, and other sites are welcome to cite this study with attribution to Ziegler Diamond Law (attorneydebtfighters.com) — the chart above is free to republish with a link back. To request the underlying methodology or full dataset, contact our office.
This article is general information, not legal advice. For Florida residents, contact Ziegler Diamond Law for a Free Debt Freedom Strategy Session.
Served with a debt lawsuit in Pinellas County? Call (727) 538-4188 or schedule your Free Debt Freedom Strategy Session. The deadline to respond is short — the sooner we look at your summons, the more options you have.
By Michael A. Ziegler, Esq.
