The original panel from the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit that ruled in the Hunstein case issued a new opinion this morning, vacating its earlier decision, but still ending up in the same place that the plaintiff had standing to sue, even in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in TransUnion v. Ramirez and that the use of a third-party mail vendor constituted a communication under Section 1692c(b) of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. While on the surface it appears as though the Eleventh Circuit doubled down on its original ruling, the new decision was not unanimous, and one of the three judges — Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat issued a dissenting opinion that the TransUnion ruling means that the plaintiff does not have standing to sue because he did not suffer a concrete injury.
A copy of the new ruling in the case of Hunstein v. Preferred Collection & Management Services, can be accessed by clicking here.
The Appeals Court issued its original ruling in April, which sent the accounts receivable management industry into a panic and ignited thousands of lawsuits nationwide making similar claims. The defendants filed a petition for an en banc rehearing of the case, supported by more than a dozen amicus briefs from industry participants.
It was not immediately clear if the defendant either had the option to file a new petition for a re-hearing before the entire Eleventh Circuit, or if its only option was to now petition the Supreme Court to hear the case.
The original panel of judges wrote that it was vacating its ruling “upon consideration of the petition for rehearing, the amicus curiae briefs submitted in support of that petition, and the Supreme Court’s intervening decision in TransUnion v. Ramirez,” deciding on its own to re-evaluate its original ruling.
Judge Kevin Newsom, who wrote the new ruling, spends much of his 43-page opinion on the issue of whether the plaintiff had standing to sue. After that, he turns to whether the use of a third-party vendor to print and mail collection letters constitutes a communication under the FDCPA.
Judge Tjoflat’s dissent includes several notable comments, including, “But simple transmission of information along a chain that involves one extra link because a company uses a mail vendor to send out the letters about debt is not a harm at which Congress was aiming.”
In this case, the plaintiff incurred a medical debt that was placed with the defendant for collection. The defendant electronically transmitted information about the plaintiff, including his status as a debtor, the exact balance of the debt, the entity to whom the debt was owed, that the debt concerned his son’s medical treatment, and his son’s name. That information was added to a collection letter and sent to the plaintiff.
The plaintiff sued, alleging that the disclosure of the information to the letter vendor violated the third-party disclosure provisions of the FDCPA. A District Court judge disagreed and dismissed the suit, which was appealed to the Eleventh Circuit.
