SALT LAKE CITY — The photos show two right fenders twisted around each other.

One car was driven by Brea Quinn. She, her husband, Jensen Quinn, live with their two young children in Weber County.

An employee of the Utah Department of Corrections drove the other car. It was owned by the state.

Six years later, that fender bender on a residential street in North Ogden has skidded into a class-action lawsuit the Quinns have filed against Utah and its Office of State Debt Collection. The suit is about what happened after the accident – and what did not.

As the Quinns denied fault for the accident, Utah twice held onto the couple’s tax refunds, the state admits in court documents, without first obtaining a court order to do so and ignoring an appeal attempt.

“We estimate hundreds, if not thousands of Utahns that this has happened to,” said Karra Porter, an attorney representing the Quinns, in an interview with FOX 13 News.

Porter says she and her co-counsel personally know of other people who had their state tax refunds seized without a court order. The Office of State Debt Collection has not yet told the plaintiffs how often such seizures have occurred.

It didn’t tell FOX 13 News either, saying it had no data on the seizures, nor on how many people have appealed them or what the outcomes of those hearings were – the kind of data typically kept by other state agencies that entertain appeals.

Administrators of the Office of State Debt Collection also declined interview requests.

ADMINISTRATIVE GARNISHMENT

“They call it garnishment,” Porter says. “A legitimate garnishment is when a court issues an order and then you collect that way, maybe part of somebody’s wages or something.”

“This is just kind of a made-up garnishment – an ‘administrative garnishment,’” Porter said, using her fingers to put air quotes around the term, “where they just decided ‘we’re going to take somebody’s money.’”

You don’t need to get into a car accident with a state employee to have your tax refund seized. As the FOX 13 Investigates team was reporting this story, a station employee volunteered that his tax refund had been seized over an unpaid parking ticket in Salt Lake City. The city later provided a ledger showing each year it forwards hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid parking tickets to the Office of State Debt Collection.

Billy Hesterman, president of the Utah Taxpayers Association, which promotes fair and equitable taxation, told FOX 13 News he had never heard of a case like the Quinns’.

“As you look at it,” Hesterman said, “you feel like an individual has a right to due process and they’re not getting that at this time.”

Even in the case of unpaid parking tickets, Hesterman asked why the state can’t use the courts to go through the standard garnishment process.

DINGED

The car accident happened in 2019. Porter says the Corrections employee was backing out of a driveway and entered Brea Quinn’s lane.

“The state claimed it was Brea’s fault,” Porter said.

But the Quinns’ insurer investigated, Porter said, and determined, “‘I don’t think so. Your employee was in the wrong lane.’”

Ordinarily, a judge or jury would decide who was at fault. But in 2020, the Quinns received a notice from the Office of State Debt Collection that it was keeping the couple’s $255 tax refund. It was applied toward $7,353 the state said the couple owed for the car accident.

The notice gave the Quinns instructions for appealing to the office.

“If I feel like you owe me money,” Porter said, “I can’t just go take something of yours and then say, ‘Well ask me for a hearing.’”

“Even if I owed you money,” Porter added, “you can’t necessarily take my spouse’s tax [refund].”

An attorney for the Quinns filed the appeal. No one replied, according to court records.

Instead, the Office of State Debt Collection held the Quinns’ tax refund again the following year. This time it was $650.

The Quinns’ lawyer wrote another appeal letter. The debt collection office returned the $650.

But the Quinns were encountering a new problem. Since the tax refunds weren’t enough to cover that $7,353 the Office of State Debt Collection said the family owed, the office forwarded the case onto a private debt collector.

“So, then the Quinns start getting dinged by a private debt collector for this debt that had never even been established,” Porter said.

The Quinns filed their class-action lawsuit against the state in July of last year. The suit claims their due process was violated.

“The state tried to make it go away,” Porter said, “by offering the Quinns their initial money and later they offered more money with interest and then offered to pay the attorneys.

“But the Quinns are worried that this is happening to people everywhere.”

In a court filing, the Office of State Debt Collection has admitted to taking the Quinns’ tax refunds without a court order or appeal hearing, but the agency denied violating the couple’s rights.

Hesterman, with the Utah Taxpayers Association, said, “Maybe there needs to be legislation to look at protecting taxpayers in this way to give them the opportunity to at least make their case.”

HAS YOUR REFUND BEEN SEIZED WITHOUT A COURT ORDER?

The FOX 13 Investigates team wants to hear from you. Please email us at iteam@fox13now.com. Please attach a copy of your notice or notices. We would like to read the notices on the air.

To learn more about the class-action lawsuit, go to www.taxrefundclassaction.com. You can also contact your state legislators. When FOX 13 News attempted to ask legislators about this issue, several didn’t know tax refunds were being seized.