A District Court judge in California has granted a defendant’s motion fo summary judgment after it was sued for allegedly violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by calling the plaintiff 15 times during a six-month span.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Allen v. Credit Collection Services can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff incurred a debt that was placed with the defendant for collection. During a two-month span between November 2016 and January 2017, the defendant placed eight calls to the plaintiff. The plaintiff picked up the phone once and there was a “brief exchange” before the call was disconnected. The plaintiff called back the same day, disputed that he owed anything, and said he would follow up with the original creditor.
During the next four months, the defendant made seven more calls — all evenly spaced apart — to the plaintiff, and each call was unanswered.
Even though he never revoked consent to be contacted or asked the defendant to stop calling him, the plaintiff filed suit, alleging the defendant violated Section 1692d(5) of the FDCPA which prohibits “causing a telephone to ring or engaging any person in telephone conversation repeatedly or continuously with intent to annoy, abuse, or harass any person at the called number.”
During a deposition, the plaintiff claimed to have told the defendant to stop contacting him, but the defendant’s detailed records did not indicate that such a request was actually made.
Because he only offered “vague and unsubstantiated” testimony during his deposition to rebut the “solid evidence” provided by the defendant, the plaintiff’s “self-serving testimony” was not enough for the judge to allow the case to continue, especially considering that the defendant only made 15 calls during the time span in question.
“Plaintiff cannot say who at CCS he spoke with or on how many occasions such conversations occurred,” wrote Judge Morrison England, Jr., of the District Court for the Eastern District of California. “He offers no notes of any conversations he purports to have had and cannot even say when the conversations took place any more definitely that that they occurred over a period of some three months.”
