OT legal experts...Settle a debate

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Can a credit card company successfully sue you in civil court for unpaid balance?

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Yes.

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Or sell the debt to a collector & they sue?

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Yes.

a good lawyer can sue for anything

That's why I added successfully

Yes and yes. Whichever of your "friends" is arguing otherwise is probably a democrat.

Just tell them to pay there bills and this wouldn't be an issue

In LA they have 3 yrs to bring a suit for defaulting on unsecured credit debt. Its 10 yrs for secured debt. The time frame differs in every state.

There is an active and lucrative secondary debt market. All kinds of debts are bought, sold, transferred all legal and various terms and methods are used. Allonge, assignment are some easily googled ones.

Used to be able to buy charged off credit cards at around 3.5 cents/dollar, pretty easy to turn a profit operating from kitchen table collecting those.

Worked for a guy in the 90's that did that buying RTC paper from the S&L closures. He was at one time 2nd behind only Bill Gates in America for wealth. Then the greed kicked in, started cooking the books with help of former Fed Bank Examiner. Set up a scheme selling bonds with the bad debt as collateral, called a Securitization or Securitized Bonds. Remember that for when you get some investment money. Securitized means debt is collateral for debt. A very real weakness for collateral (what part of Bad in debt makes for a Good collateral?)They ended up having at least 1 shell corporation issuing bad checks to buy portfolio's so they could then resell same debts repackaged as new bonds. Got really hairy and juries won't convict what they can't understand so he was acquitted. His childhood buddy spent 3 years in Club Fed on a plea deal though as a Sr. VP of the private corporation. The former fed bank examiner pulled ripcord on golden parachute left with $3.5 million and the hard drives for Florida (hard drives never found again, probably at bottom of a sinkhole).

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There is an active and lucrative secondary debt market. All kinds of debts are bought, sold, transferred all legal and various terms and methods are used.

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google John Oliver Last Week Tonight debt

Good show on it

His show purchased $15MM of medical debt for $60k and forgave all the debt.

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Lol, that's what the argument has shifted to now. What if the debt is old but was recently bought. He swears it's a hypothetical but there's way too many specifics in here

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If the debt has prescribed then it's a bit more complicated. In that case it's not legally owed but they can still bother you about it. They could still sue you over it (but lose) but most will not if its prescribed on its face. The date it first became delinquent starts the prescription (Louisiana, Statute of Limitations everywhere else). If the debt is acknowledged it restarts the clock. The date the creditor sold it to collections means nothing.

The answer is maybe. Most credit card companies and debt buyers keep really shitty records, and rarely do they have a signed cardholder agreement to present in court. If the defendant doesn't show up to court and sends a lawyer to trial for them, there is a good chance the credit card company/ debt buyer will not be able to prove their case. In this area I would say about 80% of claims under $10,000 go in favor of a debtor if he is represented by competent counsel.