Maybe it was indeed one payment and then the bank asked for something unreasonable, further delaying other payments.
It happened to me once. I received an unreasonable bill for building maintenance fees, didn't pay, they sent me a lawyer making more unreasonable demands, I told them to fuck off (after consulting a lawyer myself). The thing is : because I didn't know how much to pay, I didn't pay for several months in a row. I only paid after everything was sorted out. It never went to court BTW, the guy responsible for the mess has been fired and his successor did a great job cleaning it.