A District Court judge in Illinois has granted a defendant’s motion for summary judgment after it was sued for allegedly violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act because the plaintiff claimed that the defendant would not allow him to dispute a debt, despite call recordings that illustrate the opposite is what he was told.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Dennin v. Waypoint Resource Group can be accessed by clicking here.
The backstory to this case is long and convoluted, but here is a short summary: the plaintiff noted a negative item on his credit report. He called the defendant — which had reported the debt as not being paid — twice. In the first call, in which the plaintiff spoke to two representatives from the defendant, asking to have the account removed from his credit report and then offering to pay the balance to get the item removed from his credit report. The plaintiff called back four days later and officially disputed the debt.
In his complaint, the plaintiff claimed the defendant’s representative said he could not dispute the debt. In his response to the defendant’s summary judgment motion, the plaintiff claims the defendant’s representative said that he could not dispute the debt and pay it off at the same time.
The recording of the first call provides all the evidence the defendant needed. When told by the plaintiff that he was disputing the debt, the first representative said, “Okay sir, we can’t remove it from the bureau at this time, but I can file a dispute.” When the second representative was told by the plaintiff that the debt was being disputed, the second representative said, “We can dispute the balance; however, once that dispute is in place, that does not actually prevent it from being reported to the credit bureau. And if it is reported already through the credit bureau, we’re not able to actually remove it, even if you were to actually pay the balance.”
Noted Judge James Shadid of the District Court for the Central District of Illinois, Eastern Division, “The FDCPA is designed to prevent abusive behavior from debt collectors — none of which occurred here. This is not the case where Waypoint was incessantly calling Dennin. To the contrary, if anything, Waypoint reportedly tried calling him twice, he did not answer. And so, it reported the debt to credit bureaus, which finally got his attention.”
