Debt Buyers + Collectors

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A federal judge in Utah has ruled that a debt collector may rely on the “bona fide error” defense to defeat a claim for violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1692, et seq.  Analyzing the compliance procedures that the debt collector had in place, the Court granted summary judgment for …

On September 7, the Financial Services Committee held hearings on a bill, H.R. 1849: Practice of Law Technical Clarification Act of 2017 (Trott), that seeks to amend the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

The current definition of “debt collector” under the FDCPA does not make clear whether it applies to attorneys, especially in the…

On September 28, 2017, the District of New Jersey denied a debt collector’s motion to dismiss a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”) claim based on 1099C language contained in a collection letter.  This decision continues a recent trend, particularly within the courts of the Third Circuit, in denying motions to dismiss on this issue. …

On August 18, following a bench trial, the United States District Court for the District of Nevada found defendants Terrason Spinks and his company, Jet Processing, Inc., jointly and severally liable for $280,911,870 in consumer injury caused by violations of the Federal Trade Commission Act (“FTC Act”) and Electronic Fund Transfer Act (“EFTA”).  This case…

On August 23, a federal judge in Illinois ruled that a consumer who had multiple accounts with different creditors assigned to the same collection agency did not effectively revoke consent for all accounts merely by revoking consent for one.  Specifically, the Court said that when a consumer told a collection agency to stop calling him…

On September 18, in an en banc review, the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit overruled, in part, seminal cases Barger v. City of Cartersville, 348 F.3d 1289 (11th Cir. 2003) and Burnes v. Pemco Aeroplex, Inc., 291 F.3d 1282 (11th Cir. 2002), adopting a totality-of-the-circumstances analysis when facing questions of judicial…

On September 20, a United States District judge for the Northern District of California granted defendant United Recovery System’s motion for attorneys’ fees and costs arising from its successful defense of a lawsuit based on alleged violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the California Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, also known as…

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently released its Summer 2017 Supervisory Highlights, which summarizes the agency’s supervisory activities during the first half of this year.

Looking to the numbers.  From January through June, the CFPB’s nonpublic supervisory activities led to restitution payments that totaled approximately $14 million, and public enforcement actions that netted an…

Two recent decisions from the Southern District of New York and the District of New Jersey have expressly disagreed about a credit repair company’s dispute of a debt on behalf of a consumer in two Fair Debt Collection Practices Act cases. 

In Taylor-Burns v. AR Resources, Inc., plaintiff Tonya Taylor-Burns alleged that the debt …

On August 24, the United States District Court for the Western District of New York entered a Stipulated Order for Permanent Injunction and Monetary Judgment against the last of a group of defendants who engaged in banned debt collection practices.  The defendant, Anthony Coppola, is now barred from debt collection activities, misrepresenting material facts of…