District Court grants summary judgment in FCRA and FDCPA suit

Courts Debt Cancellation FCRA FDCPA Consumer Finance Credit Reporting Agency

On September 30, the District Court for the Northern District of New York granted a defendant’s motion for summary judgment in an FCRA and FDCPA suit. According to the order, the plaintiff allegedly discovered that the defendant communicated incorrect information regarding a debt to credit reporting agencies (CRAs) and subsequently began disputing the debt. The defendant confirmed that the tradeline was accurate and that the account had been paid in full. The plaintiff then sent letters to the different CRAs, the original creditor, and the defendant, claiming that the information being communicated was inaccurate. The plaintiff continued to receive responses indicating that the information being reported was accurate and that the account had been paid in full. The plaintiff then received a letter from a bank rejecting his application for a credit card on the basis that they had received negative information about the plaintiff’s credit from a credit reporting agency. The plaintiff claimed that the defendant violated the FCRA by failing to conduct a reasonable investigation, failing to review information provided by the CRAs, and failing to modify or delete information it could not verify as accurate. The court disagreed, finding that the defendant’s investigations were “reasonable under the circumstances,” given that the plaintiff’s disputes contained “various misleading descriptions that indicated” the debt was not the plaintiff’s, when he had admitted in other circumstances it was. Regarding the FDCPA claim, the court noted that “even if this information was false or inaccurate, there is no evidence whatsoever that it was communicated in connection with the collection of a debt.”