A District Court judge in Texas has granted a defendant’s motion for summary judgment after it did exactly what it was supposed to do when an individual disputed a debt yet still chose to file suit alleging the defendant violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by communicating information that was known to be false, including that a disputed debt is disputed.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Anderson v. Express Recovery Services can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff was injured while at work in 2012 and received medical treatment from a healthcare facility. The facility tried to collect on the debt, but the plaintiff argued that his employer’s insurance should pay the bill. The account was eventually placed with the defendant in 2013 and the defendant sent multiple letters and made multiple phone calls to try and collect on the debt. In 2015, the plaintiff notified the defendant that he was disputing the debt. The defendant notified the credit reporting agencies that the debt was disputed, and continued to do so in 2016, 2017, and 2018. The defendant also sought verification of the debt from the original creditor and forwarded that information to the plaintiff.
The plaintiff filed suit in 2018, alleging the defendant had violated Section 1692e(8) of the FDCPA, which prohibits communicating false information, including that a disputed debt has been disputed, even though he concedes that “he has yet to obtain any document from any CRA where his account was not marked as disputed,” wrote Judge Kenneth Hoyt of the District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Victoria Division. “The record is devoid of any evidence to support the plaintiff’s claim that [the defendant] reported materially deceptive, misleading or false information to the CRAs concerning the medical debt or that it failed to report the debt as disputed.”
The defendant argued that the plaintiff had failed to demonstrate a genuine issue of material fact, to which Judge Hoyt agreed in granting the motion for summary judgment.
