MCLENNAN COUNTY, TX — A new Texas law that took effect September 1st., helps protect people who have to rent furniture, appliances or electronics from getting arrested for missing a payment.
For years Texas law allowed it -- until a Waco attorney and others demanded change.
For years, the Texas "Theft of Service" law, presumed customers guilty of theft, if they rented merchandise and then didn't return the goods or respond to a demand letter. Prosecutors didn't have to even prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
Attorney Jason Milam had a problem with that... he describes it as the law's "utter unfairness" and the no-win cases that dropped in his lap because of that "presumption of guilt".
"The thing that shocked me the most when I started practicing criminal law was, to learn these people that were being arrested and thrown in jail and prosecuted for failure to pay a debt, that it was actually legal," he explained.
He notes, what happened with rental items only applied to those items. It couldn't apply to your house, your car... or anything else.
Milam says rental companies never put some important information in their contracts, and once in court, the companies got restitution plus interest, sometimes earning double an item's worth.
So, Milam got to work. "It started with a Facebook post actually, I wrote a long article and I thought about it and eventually some reporters from the Texas Tribune saw the article and contacted me," he recalled.
The Texas Tribune investigation,blew the lid off this so called "dirty little secret"... which uncovered something else interesting.
"McLennan county was one of the, if not THE leading county in Texas in this type of prosecution. Especially the Waco, police department and the Bellmead Police Department," he said.
Armed with the Tribune investigation he and concerned lawmakers like Waco's "Doc" Anderson, he sold a change in the law in the halls of the capital.
"I think this was such an obvious issue an obvious injustice, that at the end of the day, that there really wasn't any opponent to it."
Except for maybe the rental companies. Plano-based Rent-A-Center said in a statement at the time, "Rent-A-Center only filed charges when a customer refused to return product and
evidenced an intent to steal."
the new law would seem to make that a certainty.
Milam's next crusade? Ending what he calls the unconstitutional practice of requiring cash bond for low risk defendants.
