The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court’s motion for judgment on the pleadings in favor of defendants that were accused of not properly investigating a disputed item on the plaintiff’s credit report, echoing the lower court in saying that investigations should be about factual items, not legal questions.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Batterman v. BR Carroll Glenridge, IQ Data, Equifax Information Services, and TransUnion can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff sought to terminate his lease on an apartment after it was flooded and became uninhabitable. The owner of the apartment acknowledged the termination of the lease, but claimed the plaintiff owed $2,816 in liquidated damages and hired a collection agency to recover the amount. Both the collection agency and the apartment owner reported the debt to two credit reporting agencies. The plaintiff disputed the debts to the two credit bureaus, and then filed suit against all the parties, alleging a number of violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
The defendants filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings, and the motion was referred to a magistrate court judge. The magistrate court judge recommended that the defendants’ motion be denied. But a District Court judge overruled the recommendation, saying that a factual inaccuracy is required to state a claim under the FCRA.
Because the plaintiff did not allege that the amount of the reported debt was inaccurate, the Appeals Court said the District Court’s ruling was correct. The plaintiff’s complaint focused on the fact that the plaintiff believed he did not owe the $2,9816 in liquidated damages to the apartment owner. In effect, the complaint “concerns a contractual dispute that
requires resolution by a court of law, not a credit reporting agency.”
