8th Circuit affirms decision in FDCPA case

Courts Appellate Eighth Circuit FDCPA Debt Collection Consumer Finance

On September 6, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed a district court’s order to grant a defendant’s motion for judgment on the pleadings in an FDCPA suit. According to the opinion, the defendant sent the plaintiff a debt collection letter identifying the plaintiff as the attorney for a consumer named in the letter. The consumer was not the plaintiff’s client, the consumer had never identified the plaintiff as her attorney to anyone, and the plaintiff had never identified himself as the consumer’s attorney. When the plaintiff was unable to recognize the consumer’s name, he engaged in an extensive search of his files and records to determine if he had ever represented the consumer, and “found nothing to indicate that she was a past or present client.” The plaintiff filed suit, asserting that the defendant violated § 1692c(b) of the FDCPA when it contacted him regarding the debt of a consumer whom he did not represent and without the consumer’s consent. The plaintiff alleged that he suffered injury as a result of the violation, because his search for the consumer’s records cost him “valuable time and resources that he could have spent working on matters for actual clients.” The district court ruled that the defendant’s letter violated § 1692c(b) but said that the plaintiff lacked standing to sue under the statute and entered judgment on the pleadings against the plaintiff.

On appeal, the 8th Circuit agreed with the district court that the defendant violated the FDCPA when it sent the letter to the attorney, but also agreed with other circuit courts that non-consumers cannot bring § 1692c(b) claims. The appellate court noted that “[b]ecause the purpose of § 1692c(b) is to protect consumers alone, we conclude that [the plaintiff] falls outside § 1692c(b)’s ‘zone of interests’ and thus cannot invoke the protection afforded by it.” The 8th Circuit rejected the plaintiff’s argument that the proper course of action was to remand the case back to state court, where it was originally filed, and affirmed that the decision “was a ruling on the merits of [the plaintiff’s] claim, not on the district court’s jurisdiction.”