CREDIT ACCEPTANCE CORPORATION v. JIMMY STORMENT & TOBEY STORMENT

Let’s cut straight to the chase: a debt collector is suing a married couple in rural Oklahoma for $13,287.09—over a car. Not a luxury SUV. Not a Tesla with heated seats and a frickin’ karaoke mode. Just… a car. And now we’re all here, reading a three-paragraph legal document so dry it could suck the moisture out of a cactus, all because someone didn’t pay their auto loan. Welcome to Crazy Civil Court, where the stakes are low, the paperwork is endless, and the drama is 100% real.

Meet Jimmy and Tobey Storment—a married couple living somewhere in Haskell County, Oklahoma, which, for the record, is not a fictional town from a dystopian novel but an actual place with a population smaller than that of a Walmart on Black Friday. They’re not celebrities. They don’t have a reality show. They probably don’t even know they’re now minor characters in a legal saga that’s about to get the true-crime podcast treatment (albeit one hosted by someone who wears sweatpants and drinks expired La Croix). On the other side of this legal ring? Credit Acceptance Corporation—a name that sounds like a villain from a 1980s financial thriller. This is not your local credit union with cookies and smiling tellers. This is a publicly traded debt-buying machine based in Michigan that specializes in high-risk auto loans, often targeting people with shaky credit who are just trying to get to work without walking ten miles in cowboy boots.

So what happened? Well, according to the thinnest legal petition we’ve ever seen—like, it makes a CVS receipt look like War and Peace—Jimmy and Tobey bought a car. At some point, they financed it. At some later point, Credit Acceptance Corporation says they stopped paying. That’s it. That’s the whole story. There’s no dramatic repossession chase. No “I sold the car to a guy in a trench coat for $200 and now I can’t find it.” No “the transmission fell out and the lender refused to fix it.” Just… radio silence on the payments. And now, the balance owed? $13,287.09. After “application of all credits,” which sounds like something your mom says when she’s mad about your phone bill but still gives you Wi-Fi.

Now, you might be thinking, “Wait, why is this even a case? People miss car payments all the time.” And you’re right. But here’s where it gets juicy: Credit Acceptance Corporation doesn’t just lend money—they buy delinquent auto loans from dealerships, then sue to collect. It’s their entire business model. They’re like the vultures of the auto financing world, circling over used-car lots waiting for someone to fall behind. And when they do? Swoop. They file these bare-bones lawsuits all over the country, often in small counties where the courts are understaffed and defendants rarely show up. It’s not personal. It’s just profit.

And make no mistake—this lawsuit is not about justice. It’s about collection. The petition doesn’t even bother with details. No mention of the car. No date of purchase. No terms of the contract. Not even a throwaway line like “Defendants promised to pay and then ghosted.” Just: “They owe us $13,287.09. Please make them pay.” It’s so sparse, you start wondering if Greg A. Metzer, the attorney on the case (who, by the way, works at a firm called METZER & AUSTIN, P.L.L.C., which sounds like a law office from a legal drama where everyone wears leather jackets and says “objection” dramatically), just copy-pasted this from a template while waiting for his coffee to brew.

So what’s at stake here? $13,287.09. Is that a lot? Well, in Haskell County, where the median household income is somewhere between “paycheck to paycheck” and “I grow my own potatoes,” yes—that’s a lot. That’s a used car all over again. That’s a year of groceries. That’s six months of electric bills in July when the AC’s running like it’s training for the Daytona 500. And Credit Acceptance isn’t just after the principal—they want interest from the date of judgment, which means the longer this drags on, the more the Storments owe. Oh, and they’re also asking for a “reasonable attorney’s fee,” which in Oklahoma debt cases usually means a few hundred bucks tacked on. Not the end of the world for the corporation, but another brick in the wall of financial stress for the defendants.

Now, here’s the kicker: Jimmy and Tobey Storment don’t appear to have a lawyer. At least, not according to the filing. And Credit Acceptance? They’ve got Greg A. Metzer, a seasoned attorney with an office in Edmond and a fax number (yes, a fax number—this man is ready for the zombie apocalypse). The imbalance is staggering. It’s like showing up to a knife fight with a spoon. In these kinds of cases, defendants often don’t even know they’re being sued until the judgment’s already entered. Or they show up to court confused, unrepresented, and get steamrolled by a legal machine that files hundreds of these a year.

So what’s our take? The most absurd part isn’t the amount. It’s not even the fact that a Michigan-based corporation is suing a rural Oklahoma couple over a debt they may or may not fully understand. It’s the emptiness of the petition. This is someone’s financial life—possibly their ability to get to work, to care for their family, to avoid wage garnishment—reduced to three sentences. No context. No compassion. Just: “They owe. We sue. Give us money.” It’s the legal equivalent of a robocall.

And yet… we’re rooting for the Storments. Not because we know they’re innocent. Not because we think people should skip out on their debts. But because the system feels rigged. Because a company that profits off financial desperation shouldn’t get to file a lawsuit that reads like a grocery list. Because real people deserve real explanations. And because if we don’t at least pretend to care when the little guy gets hit with a legal sledgehammer, then what kind of court is this? A civil one? Maybe. But not a very crazy one. And where’s the fun in that?

We’re entertainers, not lawyers. But even we know this: when a car payment turns into a courtroom showdown, nobody really wins—except maybe the guy charging by the hour.