The Supreme Court granted cert in Ramirez v. TransUnion LLC to consider “whether either Article III or Rule 23 permits a damages class action where the vast majority of the class suffered no actual injury, let alone an injury anything like what the class representative suffered.” This development is a welcomed opportunity for clarity in

On December 4, Judge William M. Conley, in the Western District of Wisconsin, granted a defendant debt collector’s motion to dismiss without prejudice. The Court determined that while the plaintiff Mikayla Fellenz has standing to sue under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), her claim that the identification of the creditor was confusing and

In Riccio v. Client Services, Inc., the District Court of New Jersey dismissed a class action lawsuit finding that a failure to assure a consumer that statements in a letter would not change in the future was not materially misleading under the least sophisticated debtor test.

On February 13, 2020, Joanne Riccio received a

Plaintiffs John Slomanski and Margaret Brusewitz brought an FDCPA class action, Slomanski and Brusewitz v. Alliance Collection Agencies, in the Eastern District of Wisconsin alleging that debt collection letters sent to them and other class members were misleading and violated §1692e of the FDCPA. They alleged that the letters were misleading because they listed

In Gould v. Monarch Recovery Mgmt., No. 18-C-1282 (E.D. Wis. Nov. 10, 2020), the Plaintiff’s counsel sought $57,073.37 in attorneys’ fees after accepting an offer of judgment as to claims under the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (“FDCPA”). Finding that counsel had achieved only limited success, the Court reduced the fees requested by fifty

Midwest Recovery Systems (“Midwest Recovery”), a debt collection company, must cease its alleged debt-parking practices, delete all reported debts, and surrender its remaining assets in partial payment of a $24.3 million monetary judgment, under a stipulated order filed by the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) last week. Debt parking, also known as “passive debt collection,” occurs

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, deciding to take up the issue of Plaintiff’s standing sua sponte, recently remanded the case of Adams v. Skagit Bonded Collectors, LLC d/b/a SB&C Ltd. back to the District Court with instructions to dismiss the case without prejudice for lack of jurisdiction. This case involved an FDCPA complaint

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held in Urbina v. National Business Factors Inc. that a debt collector cannot use a “bona fide error” defense to shield itself from liability under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”) by merely: (1) requiring its creditor clients to provide accurate account information, and (2) requesting verification

In Paul v. Enhanced Recovery Company, the plaintiff received two letters from a debt collector concerning the same debt, about 40 days apart. The letters were identical, except for the dates and the amount of the settlement offers – the first contained an offer of $1,375.42, while the second offer was $1,277.17.

In addition

Reversing a district court’s dismissal for failure to state a claim under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”), the Second Circuit (“the Court”) ruled in Mizrachi v. Wilson, Elser, Moskowitz, Edelman & Dicker LP that a threat of suit without further notice included in the defendant’s debt collection letter may have overshadowed notice of