Objectivity is supposed to allow things to be black or white. There aren’t supposed to be shades of grey. Those are for objectivity’s cousin, subjectivity. But even standards that are supposed to be considered objective can sometimes be open to interpretation. At least that is what a plaintiff unsuccessfully attempted to argue in a Fair Credit Reporting Act case in which a District Court judge in Florida granted a defendant’s motion for judgment on the pleadings.
A copy of the ruling int he case of Brown v. TransUnion et al. can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff argued that the payment status on a tradeline that appeared on her credit report as “90 days past due” was inaccurate and misleading because the account had been paid and closed. The issue was that the account appeared to have been past due when the balance was paid off, which is why the account was now being notated as paid and closed, despite being past due. The plaintiff filed suit, alleging the creditor failed to conduct a reasonable investigation into her dispute and that the notation in the “pay status” field was hurting her credit score.
Binding precedent within the Eleventh Circuit — which includes Florida — dictates that all that matters is whether the information contained in the report is accurate. Whether that information helps or hurts an individual’s credit score is of no importance to the creditor furnishing the information. The plaintiff argued that the precedents cited by Judge Virginia M. Hernandez Covington of the District Court for the Middle District of Florida were “antiquated” and “out of touch” and that the FCRA needs to be updated.
But, Judge Hernandez noted, it is the job of Congress to update the laws, not federal judges.
“Viewing the credit reports objectively and in their entirety, the only reasonable reading of the Exeter account is that the account was past due in September 2020, at which time the account was updated one last time and closed – zeroing out the balance,” Judge Hernandez wrote. “It does not indicate, as Brown argues, that she is currently 60 days (or 90 days) past due.”
