A District Court judge in New York has granted a defendant’s motion to dismiss after it was sued for allegedly violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by filing a lawsuit of its own against an individual with an unpaid debt even though it was not able to prove it had standing to do so.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Mora v. LVNV Funding, LLC can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff was sued for an unpaid debt by the defendant, but at the summary judgment stage, the defendant was unable to prove it had standing to sue, and the judge granted the plaintiff’s motion and dismissed the case.
One year later, the plaintiff filed her suit against the defendant, alleging a host of FDCPA violations, including overstating the amount due, misrepresenting that it owned the debt, threatening to take a judgment it could not legally take, and affixing the summons to her front door without an envelope.
The defendant tried to allege the statute of limitations had expired because the plaintiff’s suit was filed more than a year after the defendant filed its complaint, but the judge denied the argument on the basis that the SOL clock did not start running until the plaintiff was served with the complaint and not when the complaint was filed.
Because the plaintiff did not allege the defendant filed its complaint in bad faith or that it knew it could not prove its claim, the judge also dismissed the charges that the defendant misrepresented the ownership of the debt.
The judge also did not think that affixing a summons to a front door violated the third-party disclosure provisions of the FDCPA because the plaintiff did not allege that anyone actually saw the summons while they were there.
