At the end of the day, all you can control are your own actions. If you ask someone to do something and they don’t do it, is that your fault? A District Court judge in Michigan opted to place blame where it lies, which was not with a collection agency that reported to the credit reporting agencies that a debt was being disputed, because it was then up to the credit reporting agencies to mark the account accordingly. The judge granted the agency’s motion for summary judgment after it was accused of violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act for not noting an account was disputed after it received a direct dispute from the plaintiff, because the plaintiff had already filed a dispute through the credit agencies.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Burns v. Keybridge Medical Revenue Care can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff disputed the debt in question through a credit agency inquiry. The defendant was notified of the dispute and reported the account as disputed 17 days later to the credit reporting agencies. The next month, the plaintiff formally disputed the debt with the defendant. After investigating the dispute and not being able to contact the original creditor, the defendant requested that the tradeline be deleted.
The plaintiff argued that the defendant failed to notify the credit reporting agencies that it had received a dispute letter from the plaintiff. “But that argument is irrelevant,” noted Judge Stephen Murphy, III of the District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. “After all, Defendant had accurately reported the debt as disputed the month before.”
As well, the evidence submitted by the plaintiff to make her case indicated that it was the credit reporting agency’s failure to mark the account as disputed, because the debt was not marked as disputed by the credit reporting agency after it was reported to the defendant. “All told, the evidence suggests only that Equifax — not Defendant
