Skip to main content
Menu Icon
Close

InfoBytes Blog

Financial Services Law Insights and Observations

District Court: Emotional distress did not cause injury-in-fact

Courts Class Action Debt Collection FDCPA Consumer Finance

Courts

On May 10, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York granted a defendant’s motion for summary judgment in a FDCPA class action suit. According to the order, the defendant sent the plaintiff a letter seeking to collect $9,700. The collections letter identified the name of the original creditor and the name of the current creditor to whom the debt was owed. The plaintiff filed suit, claiming he suffered emotional distress, and alleging that the debt was not owed to the defendants, and that the letter “erroneously” claimed that the current creditor to whom the debt was owed was not the owner of the debt, in violation of the FDCPA. The court granted the defendant’s summary judgment, dismissing the claims and finding that the case “is at the summary judgment stage,” which “requires proof of injury-in-fact beyond the sufficiency of Plaintiff’s allegations of an injury.” The court further stated that the “[p]laintiff states in his responding Declaration that his stress came from not knowing how his personal information was learned by Defendant,” but that the “[p]laintiff did not seek medical attention for the emotional distress he suffered.” The court continued that “failure to seek medical treatment is material in establishing the extent of Plaintiff’s injury (in [sic] any) from the emotional distress.” The court found that the plaintiff did “not establish[] that he suffered an injury-in-fact from his emotional distress arising from the dunning letter.”