On October 12, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued a decision rejecting a district court’s finding that the so-called informational injury doctrine established Article III standing for the named plaintiff and putative class in a class action brought under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA).
On October 17, following Washington Attorney General (AG) Bob Ferguson’s unsuccessful consumer protection action against thrift store chain, Savers Value Village Inc. (Savers), the Washington Superior Court of King County granted Savers’ motion for attorney’s fees and costs in the amount of $4.3 million. This substantial award — which is allowable under the Washington Consumer Protection Act (WA CPA) — represents a substantial recoupment of Savers’ attorneys’ fees spent to defend the almost decade-long litigation.
The Connecticut Banking Commissioner (Commissioner), acting through the Consumer Credit Division of the Department of Banking (the Division), conducted an investigation into the Law Offices of David M. Katz, discovering that in 2018 and 2019 the firm had engaged in in unlicensed collection activity involving about 10,000 Connecticut accounts with a total balance of $1.4
In Moore v. Merchants & Medical Credit Corp., Inc., the plaintiff initiated litigation in state court alleging a violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) based on the defendant’s use of a letter vendor to send the plaintiff a demand. After removal, the U.S. district court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania found that the plaintiff failed to allege a harm sufficient to confer federal jurisdiction and remanded the case to the original Pennsylvania state court.
On September 11, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced that it issued a consent order against Tempoe, LLC, a nonbank consumer finance company, for alleged violations of the Consumer Financial Protection Act (CFPA), Consumer Leasing Act, and Regulation M. That same day, it was announced that Tempoe also entered into a parallel settlement with 41 states and the District of Columbia resolving a multi-state investigation into the same alleged misconduct. Under the terms of the CFPB consent order, Tempoe was banned from consumer leasing activity and must pay $1 million to the CFPB and $1 million to the states and jurisdictions participating in the settlement.
In Hansen v. Mountain America Federal Credit Union, the plaintiff became delinquent on a credit card account with her credit union. The credit union then assigned the debt to a third-party collection agency. Following the assignment, the collection agency opened its own tradeline for the debt, while the credit union also continued to report the debt. Although the credit union’s tradeline was updated to reflect that the account was “closed” and in collections, and the collection agency’s tradeline indicated that the credit union was the original creditor, both tradelines showed a balance, albeit for different amounts — $18,340 for the credit union and $20,875 for the collection agency.
In Gebreseralse v. Columbia Debt Recovery, LLC, the plaintiff, a tenant under a residential lease agreement, vacated the premises early due to concerns over the property’s condition. In response, the property management company engaged a collection agency to recover the remaining amounts claimed as due and owing under the lease.
On August 11, in the case of Yuille v. Uphold HQ Inc., the Southern District of New York was tasked with determining whether the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (EFTA) applies to digital asset-based accounts. The court concluded there was no “account” as defined by EFTA because the digital asset account at issue was not established primarily for personal, family, or household purposes.
More than two years after the Supreme Court’s opinion in Facebook v. Duguid, courts and litigants continue to wrestle with the statutory definition of “automatic telephone dialing system” (ATDS) under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The debate centers on footnote 7 in Facebook, wherein the Supreme Court ostensibly embraced the proposition that an ATDS includes dialing systems that employ random or sequential number generators (RSNGs) to index and/or order telephone numbers for later dialing, but do not themselves generate the telephone numbers to be dialed. A recent opinion issued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado illustrates the ongoing controversy surrounding footnote 7 and its impact on current and future TCPA claims.
The Eleventh Circuit has now joined seven other circuits in holding that receipt of unwanted text messages constitutes concrete injury for standing. On July 24, the Eleventh Circuit issued an en banc decision in Drazen v. Pinto, holding that a plaintiff who received a single, unwanted text message has standing to sue under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The court departed from its earlier ruling in Salcedo v. Hanna, which held that a single unsolicited text message is but a “brief, inconsequential annoyance [] categorically distinct from those kinds of real but intangible harms” that confer Article III standing.