On May 9, 2014, U.S. Representative Matt Cartwright introduced H.R. 4624 to amend the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act to prohibit a court from awarding costs to a prevailing defendant in the absence of a finding that an action was brought in bad faith.
This legislation is in response to the United States Supreme Court’s
On April 15, 2014, a federal judge in New Jersey approved the settlement of a class-action suit against a law firm that allegedly violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). Plaintiffs claimed that Mattleman, Weinroth & Miller, whose principal office is in Cherry Hill, NJ, and Executive Credit Management, located in Stanhope, NJ, had
A recent comment letter from the American Bankers Association, Consumer Bankers Association and the Financial Services Roundtable to the CFPB urged the Bureau to prioritize third-party agencies in its FDCPA rulemakings.
Chief among the group’s concerns is maintaining “the distinction between first and third-party collections recognized by the FDCPA.” The signatories “strongly oppose placing FDCPA-like
As part of the CFPB’s annual report to Congress on the federal government’s efforts to implement the FDCPA, the FTC submitted highlights from its 2013 enforcement actions signaling that the Commission will continue to play an active role in enforcing the FDCPA in collaboration with the CFPB and state attorneys general.
The FTC noted that
On March 5, 2014, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a joint amicus brief in Buchanan v. Northland Group Inc., No. 13–2523 (6th Cir. Mar. 5, 2014), a putative consumer FDCPA class action challenging collection practices related to debts that were time barred (i.e., for which the
In a notice published in the January 14, 2014 Federal Register, the CFPB announced that it would be extending the comment deadline for the Announced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“ANPR”) that it issued on November 6, 2013 (discussed here). The ANPR seeks to modernize the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”) and will