5th Circuit affirms summary judgment in FCRA case

Courts Appellate Fifth Circuit FCRA Fair Credit Reporting Act Credit Reporting Agency

On April 22, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed a district court’s dismissal of an FCRA action, holding that the plaintiff failed to prove that his alleged injuries were the result of the defendants’ actions. According to the opinion, the plaintiff alleged that a financial institution wrongfully reported a payment delinquency on his retail credit card, which he claimed caused the subsequent denial of a loan application. Upon learning of the denial, the plaintiff disputed the late-payment notation with three credit reporting agencies (CRAs). Prior to the district court’s judgment, the plaintiff settled with the retailer, the financial institution, and one of the three CRAs. The remaining two defendant CRAs reinvestigated the delinquency with the financial institution, confirmed the information, and notified the plaintiff of the result of their investigation. The plaintiff argued that the CRAs “failed to conduct a reasonable investigation” because they never directly contacted the retailer about the disputed late payment. However, the district court held that that the CRAs’ reliance on the Automated Consumer Dispute Verification (ACDV) system to investigate the dispute and confirm the information was “generally acceptable.”

On appeal, the 5th Circuit agreed with the district court that the plaintiff “offered no reasonable factual basis” for why the CRAs “should have been on notice of a need to go beyond the ACDV system as to this dispute.” The appellate court further agreed that the plaintiff was unable to show that contacting the retailer would have changed the CRAs’ conclusions about the information they already possessed. Finally, the 5th Circuit held that the plaintiff had shown no evidence that the denial of his loan application was a direct result of the CRAs’ actions because, as the district court concluded, the loan application was denied because of a credit report from the CRA that had previously settled with the plaintiff and was no longer a party to the suit.