On April 27, 2015, the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in Spokeo Inc. v. Robins to address the issue of whether Congress may confer Article III standing on a plaintiff who suffers no concrete harm by simply authorizing a private right of action based on the violation of a federal statute alone. Although the
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission jointly filed an amicus brief with the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Bock v. Pressler & Pressler, LLP. In the case, a U.S. district court previously ruled that a debt collection law firm violated the Fair Debt Collection
The next “Debt Collection Dialogue” with the Federal Trade Commission is scheduled to occur in Dallas on September 29, 2015. It is the second of three such planned events. Representatives will discuss enforcement actions, consumer complaints, compliance issues, industry best practices, and the process for regulatory enforcement investigations and actions. The panel will include Commission
In Tierney v. Advocate Health & Hosps. Corp. (No. 14-3168, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 13966 (Aug. 10, 2015)), the Seventh Circuit recently upheld a district court’s dismissal of a proposed class action accusing a hospital of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act by failing to secure health data maintained on four desktop computers that
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sent a questionnaire with almost 60 questions to randomly selected debt collectors and service providers as part of its potential rulemaking regarding debt collection, a process that began almost two years ago.
The CFPB received 23,000 comments in response to its Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) for debt collectors,
On August 6, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a defendant’s offer of full relief does not render a plaintiff’s claims moot. The case, Chapman v. First Index, Inc. (No. 14-2773, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 13767 (7th Cir. 2015)), was a junk fax case brought pursuant to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act
Over the past two weeks, two separate federal district courts in New York held that having a consumer’s account number visible on the outside of an envelope containing letters from debt collection agencies does not, by itself, violate the FDCPA. In these cases, both Judge Colleen McMahon and Judge John Curtin, of the Southern
As previously reported, a federal judge in Atlanta denied a law firm’s motion to dismiss a claim against it filed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the Consumer Financial Protection Act or the Dodd-Frank Act. On July 27, Frederick J. Hanna & Associates filed
District Judge William J. Nealon of the Middle District of Pennsylvania issued two recent decisions holding that both a Quick Response (“QR”) code and a bar code appearing through the glassine window of an envelope containing a collection letter violate section 1692f(8) of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which prohibits “using any language or
Earlier this week, the New York Supreme Court issued an opinion finding that an insurer has a duty to defend and indemnify a national background screening company in two Fair Credit Reporting Act actions despite the policy’s exclusions of fines and penalties.
In the two underlying actions at issue (Scott Ernst v. Dish Network,