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Financial Services Law Insights and Observations

7th Circuit: No FDCPA liability when collection letter leaves future ambiguity

Courts Debt Collection Appellate Seventh Circuit FDCPA

Courts

On October 8, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed dismissal of an FDCPA action, concluding that itemized breakdowns in collection letters that include zero balances for interest and other charges would not confuse or mislead the reasonable “unsophisticated consumer” to believe that future interest or other charges would be incurred if the debt is not settled. A creditor charged-off a consumer’s credit card debt and informed the consumer that it would no longer charge interest or fees on the account. The debt was reassigned to a collection agency.  Consistent with the original creditor’s communication with the consumer, the collection agency sent a collection letter to the consumer that included an itemized breakdown reflecting a zero balance for “interest” and “other charges.” The “balance due at charge-off” and “current balance” were both listed as $425.86. The letter offered to resolve the debt and stated that no interest would be added to the account balance through the course of collection efforts. The consumer filed a putative class action alleging that the collection letter implied that the original creditor would begin to add interest and fees to the charged-off debt if the collection agency stopped its collection efforts in the future and, therefore, the debt collector violated the FDCPA by using false, deceptive and misleading representations to collect a debt, and failed to disclose the amount of the debt in a clear and unambiguous fashion. The district court dismissed the action, concluding that the collection letter accurately disclosed the amount of the debt.

On appeal, the 7th Circuit agreed with the district court. Specifically, according to the opinion, the appellate court concluded that the breakdown of charges in the letter “cannot be construed as forward looking,” rejecting the consumer’s argument that including zero balances implies that future interest or charges could be incurred if he did not accept the collector’s offer. Moreover, the appellate court noted that when a collection letter “only makes explicit representations about the present that are true, a plaintiff may not establish liability on the basis that it leaves ambiguity about the future.” The statement in the letter that no interest would accrue while the collector pursued the debt is not misleading because it “makes no suggestion regarding the possibility that interest will or will not be assessed in the future if [the debt collector] ends its collection efforts.”