Judge Dismisses FDCPA Suit Over Collection Letter

A District Court judge in Pennsylvania has dismissed a lawsuit filed against a collection agency after it was accused of violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act when it sent the plaintiff a collection letter that said “Your lack of communication may result in the enforcement of your current creditor’s rights on your contractual agreement,” because the defendant did not have the authority to file a lawsuit.

A copy of the ruling in the case of Stiffler v. Frontline Asset Strategies, LLC can be accessed by clicking here.

The plaintiff received a collection letter that included the following passage: “Your current creditor has placed the above-mentioned account in our office to resolve. Your lack of communication may result in the enforcement of your current creditor’s rights on your contractual agreement.” The plaintiff alleged the letter violated Sections 1692e and 1692g of the FDCPA because it included an “implicit” threat of litigation and because the validation notice was printed on the reverse side of the letter (with instructions to “[p]lease see the reverse side or next page for important consumer notices”.

Judge Joseph Saporito, a Magistrate Judge for the District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, ruled that using an equivocal statement when it said it “may” result in some other remedy does not meet the strict liability statutes of the FDCPA.

As well, including the validation notice on the reverse side of the collection letter, with an appropriate reference for the letter’s recipient to review the notice, is not a violation of the FDCPA.

“Having read the validation notice on the reverse of the first page, there is no reason to believe that the least sophisticated debtor would disregard it upon reading the privacy notice that follows on the next page, which does not contradict the validation notice and — inasmuch as it addresses an entirely different subject matter and appears on a separate page altogether — does not overshadow the validation notice,” Judge Saporito wrote. “While a non-observant reader might skip over the ‘important notice’ directing his or her attention to the reverse side of the first page, the ‘least sophisticated debtor,’ who has read the collection letter in its entirety

, would neither overlook nor misunderstand his or her validation rights, adequately and effectively conveyed by the validation notice set forth on the reverse of the first page.”