Lawsuits against collection agencies alleging violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act were all up in January, compared with December 2018, but only the FCRA was up from the first month of last year, according to data released yesterday by WebRecon.
As such, it led WebRecon CEO Jack Gordon to say that “the year started fairly strong for consumer litigation, but probably not strong enough to break recent trends.”
The number of FDCPA lawsuits was up 26% on a month-over-month basis, but down 12% when looking at the same months of 2018 and 2019. TCPA suits were up 35% month-over-month, but down 4% from the same month last year. And FCRA suits were up 9% month-over-month and 13% from the same month last year.
One-third of individuals who filed suit against a collection agency in January had done so previously, according to WebRecon.
More than 28% of the TCPA suits and 25% of the FDCPA suits that were filed were class-actions, according to WebRecon.
