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Stefanie Jackman

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Stefanie takes a holistic approach to working with clients both through compliance counseling and assessment relating to consumer products and services, as well as serving as a zealous advocate in government inquiries, investigations, and consumer litigation.

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On December 15, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced it had reached a settlement with medical debt collector Commonwealth Financial Systems, Inc. (Commonwealth) in its lawsuit over alleged illegal debt collection practices. Specifically, the CFPB alleged that Commonwealth failed to conduct reasonable investigations of disputes and violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) by attempting to collect disputed debt without obtaining substantiating documentation. Under the settlement agreement, Commonwealth is banned from debt collection activities, must request CRAs to delete all consumer accounts to which it had previously furnished information, and must pay a $95,000 penalty to the CFPB’s victims relief fund.

On December 12, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published the long-awaited regulation specific to motor vehicle dealers to address concerns of consumer deception in the sales process (Final Rule). We covered the proposed rule, introduced in June 2022, in a blog post here and podcast here. In a 3-0 vote, the FTC approved the issuance of the Final Rule, which will be published in the Federal Register in the coming weeks.

On November 16, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) released its Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) Annual Report detailing the CFPB’s 2022 activities related to debt collection practices. This comprehensive document summarizes everything FDCPA-related undertaken by the agency during 2022, including enforcement actions, a summary of consumer complaints, education and outreach initiatives, and highlights from examinations it conducted. In addition to summarizing activities in the debt collection space from the past year, the report hints at potential future activities. Tellingly, the CFPB’s focus in 2022 was predominantly on medical debt, as highlighted by its press release announcing this report.

A district court in the District of Arizona granted a motion to dismiss in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) case on the basis that multimedia messaging service (MMS) texts do not constitute prerecorded messages unless the audible component plays automatically upon opening.

Earlier this year, a district court for the Middle District of Florida upheld a jury award of $225,000 in punitive damages in a debt collection case finding the defendant’s conduct “reprehensible” based on the physical harm caused to the plaintiff, the defendant’s indifference or reckless disregard of the harm it caused to the plaintiff, the plaintiff’s financial vulnerability, and the defendant’s repeated actions.

On October 24, the Biden-Harris administration announced amendments to the regulations implementing title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA). According to the fact sheet, the amendments are intended to allow the Department of Education (ED) to better protect students from the negative effects of sudden college closures, restrict colleges from withholding course credits paid for with federal money from students’ transcripts, require colleges to clearly communicate how much financial aid students will receive, and provide a more streamlined process for states to approve postsecondary opportunities for students without a high school diploma or its equivalent. The amended regulations will take effect on July 1, 2024.

On October 30, President Biden issued a sweeping Executive Order calling on Congress to enact privacy laws and directing federal agencies to review existing rules and potentially explore new rulemakings governing the use of artificial intelligence (AI) across various sectors of the U.S. economy. Among other things, the Executive Order will require AI system developers to submit safety test results to the federal government, establish standards for detecting AI-generated content to fight consumer fraud, and develop AI tools to identify and fix vulnerabilities in critical software. According to the White House fact sheet, the stated goal of the Executive Order is to “ensure that America leads the way in seizing the promise and managing the risks of [AI].” To that end, the Executive Order focuses on national security, privacy, discrimination and bias, healthcare safety, workplace surveillance, innovation, and global leadership.

A U.S. District Court in the Western District of Wisconsin recently denied both the defendant and plaintiff’s summary judgment motions in a Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) case, holding that the reasonableness of the defendant’s investigation of the plaintiff’s identity theft claim was a triable issue.