In a case that was defended and argued by Troutman Pepper, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday upheld a summary judgment in favor of a defendant that was accused of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act by obtaining credit reports on individuals without a permissible purpose.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Christopher Marino, Joshua Hardin, and Kristen Hardin v. Ocwen Loan Servicing can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiffs filed for bankruptcy protection and had their personal liabilities for their mortgage debts discharged. But the liens on the properties survived the discharge and the plaintiffs continued to hold the title to the homes. After the debts were discharged, the defendant obtained the plaintiffs’ credit reports. The plaintiffs alleged this willfully violated the FCRA because they had vacated the homes, thus leaving no reason for the defendant to obtain their credit reports. A District Court judge granted the defendant’s motion for summary judgment, ruling it could not have willfully violated the FCRA.
The Ninth Circuit sided with the District Court in finding that no “reasonable fact finder could conclude” that the actions were willful.
Going a step further than determining whether accessing the credit reports amounted to a willful violation, the Appeals Court took the extra step of seeking to determine whether the defendant’s actions amounted to any kind of violation of the FCRA, and found that they did not. The defendant argued that it accessed the credit reports in order to determine whether the plaintiffs were eligible for loss mitigation options beyond foreclosure and the plaintiffs did nothing to dispel that notion, the Appeals Court ruled.
Once it determined that accessing the credit reports was not a violation of the FCRA, the Appeals Court noted that trying to determine whether the actions were willful or not became moot.
