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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.
Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe it’s not. But in the weeks following the ruling denying a motion to dismiss a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act lawsuit over the issue of not including a date on the Model Validation Notice, two more lawsuits have been filed in the same District Court making the same allegations.
Copies of the complaints, filed in the District Court for the Southern District of Florida, can be accessed using case numbers 23-cv-60341 and 23-cv-60339 or by clicking here and here.
Perhaps making the suits less of a coincidence is the fact that the plaintiffs in both suits are represented by the same attorney.
The facts in both lawsuits are practically identical. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that both complaints have the same number of paragraphs and the contents of the paragraphs in both complaints are identical. Nonetheless, both complaints allege the plaintiff received a Model Validation Notice from the defendant. The Notice — as it was originally published by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — was undated.
Because the letter was undated, the time periods used in the Model Validation Notice — “today” and “now” — confused the plaintiffs and made them seem illegitimate, because it is a common practice to date letters.
The allegations are the same that were made in Roger v. GC Services, but a District Court judge ruled that the safe harbor offered by the CFPB to those who chose to use the Model Validation Notice — either exactly as it was published by the Bureau or something that was substantially similar to it — does not extend to the substance of the document.
Whether the defendants in these cases choose the same legal strategy used by the defendant in Roger remains to be seen.
The complaints accuse the defendants of violating Sections 1692e, 1692f, and 1692g of the FDCPA. Coincidentally, perhaps, these complaints do not allege a violation of Section 1692d, which was the only count that was dismissed in the Roger
