In Camarena v. Well Fargo, plaintiff alleged that defendant violated the FDCPA by falsely reporting a mortgage debt on her credit report after her home was sold and the debt extinguished.    After plaintiff disputed the credit reporting, defendant updated the report with a different, but still incorrect balance.  The court granted defendant’s motion for summary judgment on two independent grounds.  First, the court found that the updated credit reporting was not a communication “in connection with the collection” of a debt or that the updated reporting was debt collection activity subject to the FDCPA, as the mortgage was already satisfied and there was no debt to collect.  Second, the court found that the reporting of the balance, to the extent it was false, was not a materially false statement because it would not frustrate plaintiff’s ability to intelligently choose her response to the false statement.

 

In Jones v. Wells Fargo, plaintiff alleged that defendant violated the FCRA by not investigating and reporting inaccurate statements made to the credit bureaus regarding her mortgage loan.  Defendant moved for summary judgment, arguing that its duties to investigate the debt were satisfied and that is did not violate the FCRA.  Defendant had received three ACDVs from the credit reporting agencies, and investigated each dispute, verifying some information and updating other information.  This investigation, the court found, satisfied the duty of defendant and granted judgment in defendant’s favor.

 

In Southwell v. Mortgage Investors, plaintiff filed a putative class action, alleging that defendant violated the Do Not Call regulations implemented pursuant to the TCPA by placing telemarketing calls to people that had registered on the do not call list.  Plaintiff moved to certify the class, and defendant opposed the motion arguing that plaintiff failed to introduce evidence that the class was sufficiently numerous to allow certification.  The court first examined the expert opinions offered by plaintiff to support certification, and found that the expert had merely examined a database of telephone numbers using search criteria created by plaintiff’s counsel, but offered no evidence that the people so identified had actually gotten a call after registering on the Do Not Call list.   The court also found that individual issues of consent would dominate any trial on the merits of the claim, and denied certification. 

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