The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has issued a non-precedential ruling that upholds a lower court’s decision to grant summary judgment in favor of a defendant that was sued for violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by mis-stating that amount that was owed.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Owoh v. Jason S. Sena and Cutolo Mandell, LLC can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff fell behind on fees that were owed to his condominium association and subsequently filed for bankruptcy protection. Some of the fees that were owed were discharged during the bankruptcy process, but the fees continued to accrue after the bankruptcy was discharged. The defendant filed a claim of lien, after which the plaintiffs filed their suit.
The plaintiffs argued that the amount cited on a Certificate of Amount of Unpaid Assessments was materially wrong because it included the amount of the debt that was discharged during the bankruptcy process. The judges on the Third Circuit noted that the certificate “explicitly” described the amount of the debt that was discharged and the balance was “numerically consistent” with what the plaintiff now owed.
The plaintiff also tried to argue that, along the way, they received notices that listed six different balances. But the judges rules the notifications “were prepared at six different points in time and they are consistent with both the accrual of interest and the monthly addition of unpaid balances.”
