In December 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued six opinions addressing Article III standing issues related to violations alleged under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”). These opinions revisit the Supreme Court’s decision in Spokeo, Inc. v....
After the U.S. Supreme Court decided Spokeo in 2016, there was an unfulfilled moment of hope. Defendants in Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) cases would file motions to dismiss based on lack of standing only for the courts to repeatedly deny those motions. Spokeo required that plaintiffs...
Well here is one you don’t see every day. A Plaintiff in Michigan is facing sanctions that may total the entire cost of defense in a TCPA suit. The reason? He pleaded two phone numbers in the complaint that did not actually receive any phone calls—even though he may actually have received unwanted...
You can add Judge Frederic Bock to the list of judges within the Eastern District of New York (E.D.N.Y.) who are getting tired of the endless, hyper-technical "lawyer's cases" that come across their dockets alleging Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) violations. Last week in an order that...
Consumer attorneys are manufacturing the recent surge of Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) lawsuits nationwide against creditors and debt collectors that credit report on accounts included in a consumer’s bankruptcy. Cases in this latest wave of consumer lawsuits typically assert that prior...
President Trump on Saturday nominated Amy Coney Barrett to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court. Judge Barrett has been sitting on the bench for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals since 2017. With the Supreme Court set to hear arguments in a number of...
I guess I should have seen this coming, but I didn’t. After forcefully battling to keep the TCPA on the books just last term, the U.S. Government has weighed in on the new Supreme Court TCPA ATDS debate. Instead of arguing for an expansive reading of the statute, the Government is asking the...
ACA International supports defendants in case focused on liability under the FDCPA when a factual error leads to collection on an account. A federal appeals court reviewed a case involving the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act bona-fide-error defense on Monday, June 22. ACA International filed an...
A District Court judge in Oregon has awarded the defendants in a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case more than $65,000 in fees and costs — about 40% of what was being sought — ruling that the plaintiff’s claims in her lawsuit were “clearly untenable” from the outset of the case. A copy of the...
The Northern District of California has confirmed what the law makes clear: a debt collector may send the initial communication by email (except in New York). In Greene v. TrueAccord, Case No. 19-cv-06651 (N.D. Cal. May 19, 2020), the Plaintiff claimed the initial email she received and opened...
On Wednesday, May 6th, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a case concerning the scope of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) that is of great interest to businesses and communications industry practitioners. In William P. Barr et al. v. American Association of Political...
As I continue working through the 2019 TCPA Year-End Review—patience, friends—it dawns on me just how extraordinary a year 2019 was for TCPA litigation in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal footprint. At the beginning of 2019, there seemed to be no safer jurisdiction to pursue a TCPA suit....