Authored by Alexandria J. Reyes and Benjamin R. Carlsen
Two federal district courts have dismissed lawsuits filed against debt collectors, holding that filing proofs of claim in a bankruptcy case on debt subject to a statute of limitations defense is not actionable under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
On April 13, Judge Beth Phillips, a federal judge in the Western District of Missouri, granted summary judgment in favor of Credit World Services, Inc. (“CWS”) in a case filed by a consumer that owed a debt to CWS (full opinion found here). In the lawsuit, Plaintiff alleges that CWS violated the Fair
On March 12, 2015, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s decision to grant a motion for judgment on the pleadings in a putative class action alleging that a collection law firm violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) by seeking attorneys’ fees from a consumer who defaulted on a credit
A recent decision of the Northern District of Ohio, Vantu v. Echo Recovery, L.L.C., held that a repossession agency, while generally not subject to liability under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, becomes subject to such liability when it undertakes to repossess collateral that it does not have a present right to possess.
This case
On January 21, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania struck a class action under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1692 et seq. (“FDCPA”) and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, 47 U.S.C. §§ 227 et seq. (“TCPA”). Although the judge allowed the lead plaintiff to pursue
On January 13, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the District Court’s grant of class certification in a case where plaintiffs allege violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. In Powers v. Credit Management Services, the defendant filed standard-form complaints and discovery requests against the plaintiffs in state court to collect past
On December 8, the Southern District of Indiana released a decision relating to the interplay between the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and bankruptcy. In Grandidier v. Quantum3 Group, LLC, the District Court denied a motion to dismiss a plaintiff’s complaint relating to the supposed filing of a time-barred proof of claim in the
In Powell v. Palisades Acquisition XVI, LLC, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the filing of an assignment of judgment in a debt collection action qualifies as debt collection activity that triggers the requirements of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”). In so holding, the Fourth Circuit overturned the decision of
In Harold v. Steel, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed dismissal of a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) suit based on the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. In the case, a small claims court in Marion County, Indiana, entered a judgment against Kevin Harold for a little more than $1,000. He
On November 10, the Supreme Court declined to review an appeal by debt collection law firm Phelan Hallinan & Shmieg LLP over a Third Circuit decision in a class action that held that debtors are not required to dispute a debt under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act before filing an FDCPA lawsuit.
On June