The United States District Court for the District of New Jersey recently held in Samuel Chisholm v. AFNI, Inc. that a debt collector “could not reasonably be found to violate” the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by calling a consumer 18 times on his cell phone over the course of 13 days. All calls were
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee recently held that a debt collector’s civil court summons requesting “reasonable attorney fees” does not violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. In Wilma Jones et al. v. Hospital of Morristown (Case No. 2:16cv13, 2016 LEXIS 153869 (E.D. Tenn. Oct. 6, 2016)), the plaintiff argued
On December 16, the Federal Trade Commission filed suit in Kansas federal court against Joel Tucker and the business entities he purportedly controls, alleging that Tucker marketed, distributed, and sold counterfeit debt portfolios that purport to identify consumers who have defaulted on payday loans.
Specifically, Tucker and his companies allegedly sold spreadsheets to debt collectors
According to a Federal Register notice published on November 29, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is soliciting further comments on its proposal to provide consumers with the option to fill out a short survey on their satisfaction with companies’ resolution of consumer complaints. In the notice, the CFPB described the proposal:
The purpose of this
A district court in the Seventh Circuit has denied a motion to dismiss filed by a collection attorney acting on behalf of a debt collector client, holding that the plaintiff in the case could pursue her claim based on the attorney’s failure to provide his own § 1692g validation notice in an initial communication, even
The United States District Court for the Western District of New York recently granted the Federal Trade Commission’s motion for summary judgment and entered a final order against a group of debt collectors who pretended to be affiliated with the government, and ordered them to pay nearly $11 million.
In Federal Trade Commission v. Federal
While the number of lawsuits filed under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act remained relatively steady or fell, claims under the Fair Credit Reporting Act rose sharply between October 2015 and October 2016. The total number of FCRA lawsuits increased from 283 to 355 – a 25.4 percent increase.
A district court in the Eleventh Circuit has joined the Fifth and Eighth circuits, along with a host of district courts throughout the country, in adopting the “benign language” exception to Section 1692f(8) of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and has dismissed a claim based on a collection letter with a visible barcode containing
The Federal Trade Commission has begun mailing checks totaling over $830,000 to almost 3,500 consumers who fell victim to a telemarketing debt collection scheme targeting Spanish-speaking consumers for payment of bogus debts. Centro Natural Corp, Sumore LLC, and several individuals operated a telemarketing debt collection scam that used international callers who claimed to be government
The Ninth Circuit recently broke from other circuit courts across the country and held that a trustee to a security agreement is not a debt collector pursuant to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. The case is Vien-Phuong Thi Ho v. Recontrust Co., N.A., No. 10-56884, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 18836 (9th Cir. Oct. 19,