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DISCLAIMER: This article is based on a complaint. The defendant has not responded to the complaint to present its side of the case. The claims mentioned are accusations and should be considered as such until and unless proven otherwise.
A class-action complaint has been filed against one of the three major credit reporting agencies, accusing it of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act because it allowed a furnisher to change the date of first delinquency on the plaintiffs’ tradelines so that the debt in question remained on their credit reports.
A copy of the complaint, filed in the District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia can be accessed using case number 22-cv-00149 or by clicking here.
The plaintiff filed for bankruptcy protection in 2000. Her mortgage loan was discharged in June 2000 as part of the proceedings. The defendant began servicing the mortgage in 2019. In December 2020, the plaintiff checked her credit report and noticed that her mortgage was being reported with a status of “over 120 days past due” with a past-due balance and a total balance. The defendant was allegedly publishing the information “even though it was well past the seven-year period in which it was allowed to report this information,” according to the complaint.
The plaintiff allegedly disputed the debt with the defendant twice, but both times, the defendant allegedly failed to conduct a reasonable investigation. The defendant is accused of allowing the servicer to change the date of first delinquency to allow negative information to remain on the plaintiff’s credit report for longer than the FCRA allows. Even though the mortgage was discharged in bankruptcy more than two decades ago, the defendant allegedly allowed the servicer to report a date of first delinquency of October 2019. The defendant allegedly allows furnishers to change the date of first delinquency without any justification or explanation for the change.
The defendant is accused of violating Sections 1681c(a), 1681e(a), 1681e(b), and 1681i(a) of the FCRA. The complaint seeks to include anyone where a servicer changed the date of first delinquency in cases where the original date of first delinquency was more than seven years old.
