Due to the U.S. Government partial shutdown, the Federal Trade Commission announced a temporary suspension of all of its investigations, including those into debt collection activities. As a result, the FTC has stated that its investigators cannot conduct normal fact-finding and attorneys cannot engage in settlement negotiations at this time. In particular, during the
A Pennsylvania district court recently dismissed a complaint due to the plaintiff’s lack of standing to assert violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. In Harmon v. RapidCourt, LLC, Case No. 17-5699 (E.D. Pa. Nov. 20, 2018), consumer plaintiff Icarus Harmon asserted violations based on a stale criminal history that RapidCourt had provided to
A Florida federal judge entered a judgment for over $23 million last week against Robert Guice, the alleged operator of a telemarketing scam offering debt relief services to consumers.
The lawsuit, brought by the Federal Trade Commission and the Florida Attorney General, alleged that Guice created Loyal Financial & Credit Services, LLC (“Loyal”), Life Management
A wave of lawsuits filed under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, especially in the Second Circuit, continues regarding disclosures of interest and fees in collection letters. Consumers have complained about failure to warn of interest and fees continuing to accrue, as well as failure to disclose that interest and fees did not accrue. The
Joining an “overwhelming majority of the courts in this district,” the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey recently held that a plaintiff alleging misleading representations in a debt collection letter under 15 U.S.C. § 1692e of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”) demonstrated concrete injury sufficient to confer Article III
In A-1 Premium Acceptance, Inc. v. Hunter, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the circuit court’s order denying counterclaim defendant A-1’s motion to compel arbitration because the plain language of the consumer arbitration agreement limited the arbitrator to the National Arbitration Forum (NAF). After the parties executed the arbitration agreement, NAF entered into a consent
A court in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa recently ruled that the protections applicable when consumer reports are obtained for “employment purposes” under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) do not extend to reports obtained for independent contractors. This issue has been unsettled and both employers and background screening
On November 29, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a district court’s grant of summary judgment to Drexel University in a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case brought by a former student.
In Tiene v. Law Office of J. Scott Watson PC, No. 18-1221 (3d Cir. Nov. 29,
The Northern District of California recently dismissed a putative class action, filed under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, challenging an employer’s inclusion of state-specific information in its FCRA consent and disclosure form. The Court held that the plaintiff had no standing to assert her FCRA claim because she failed to plead a concrete injury-in-fact.
In
On December 4, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it is seeking comment on whether the agency should make changes to rules requiring that financial institutions and creditors take certain steps to detect signs of identity theft that may affect their customers.
In a press release, the FTC stated that as part of its