In Roth v. CitiMortgage, plaintiff alleged that defendant violated the FDCPA by failing to adequately respond to her request for verification of a mortgage debt.  The district court dismissed the claim, and the debtor appealed.  The appellate court affirmed the dismissal, concluding that the FDCPA does not apply to a mortgage servicer unless the servicing begins and the debt is received after the debt was in default.

 

In Deanda v. GC Services, plaintiff alleged that defendant violated the FDCPA by continuing to call her at her place of employment after being notified that her employer prohibited the calls at work.  Defendant moved for summary judgment,  arguing that the employer did not prohibit calls to the work place, and that plaintiff did not even know if the employer had a policy prohibiting the calls.  The court denied the motion and found that there was a disputed factual issue, as plaintiff testified that she had told defendant that she did not want to be called at work, while also claiming that her employer prohibited the calls.  The court concluded that the jury would need to determine if the employer had a policy in effect prohibiting the calls, or if plaintiff had instead just requested the calls to stop.

 

In Schwantes v. Moco Law Offices, plaintiff alleged that defendant violated the FDCPA by reporting the debt to the credit bureaus without including plaintiff's dispute.  Defendant moved to dismiss, arguing that the response to the dispute from the credit bureau, which admittedly failed to note the dispute, was not a communication under the FDCPA.  The court granted the motion, finding that the failure to include the dispute could not be false, deceptive or misleading because the "communication" was in response to plaintiff's dispute, and that the dispute was therefore inherent in any communication to the credit bureaus.

 

In Calhoun v. Certegy Check Services, plaintiff alleged that defendant violated the FDCPA and FCRA by reporting a $4 debt as a "returned check" charge in the amount of $29.  The debt arouse out of a charge plaintiff incurred for hosting fees on the creditor's website, which plaintiff alleged were historically paid not by check, but by credit card.  Defendant moved to dismiss, arguing that the responses to the 4 ACDVs were accurate and that it was not a debt collector under the FDCPA, but instead a check processor.  The court denied defendant's motion on the FCRA claim, finding that there was a viable claim for an FCRA violation for failure to conduct a reasonable investigation because the debt was potentially mischaracterized as a returned check, and the amount of the debt was disputed.   The FDCPA claim was dismissed though, as defendant was not regularly engaged in debt collection and therefore, not a debt collector.

 

In Totten v. Evergreen Professional Recoveries, plaintiff alleged that defendant violated the FDCPA when it mailed a copy of a state court judgment directly to plaintiff, despite knowing that plaintiff was represented by counsel.  The parties filed cross summary judgment motions, and the court denied plaintiff's motion and granted defendant's motion because defendant was able to establish a bona fide error defense.   Specifically, defendant established that the error was not intentional, as made clear by the training given to collectors not to mail letters to a represented consumer.  The court also found the error was bona fide, as only the judgment was mailed to plaintiff, with no collection letter or attempt to collect the debt, showing the sending of the letter was a genuine mistake.    Finally, defendant showed that there were reasonable procedures in place to prevent the error, in the form of training and written policies.

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