A District Court judge in Arizona has granted a plaintiff’s motion for partial summary judgment in a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case, while also ruling that the statutory limit of $1,000 for a violation of the statute applies to each of the defendants in FDCPA cases and does not represent the maximum that a plaintiff can receive.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Casillas v. Thunderbird Collections Specialists et al. can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff was injured at work and required medical treatment. A worker’s compensation claim was filed. One of the five defendants in this case began to attempt to collect on the unpaid debt. That defendant engaged a collection law firm to file a collection lawsuit to recover the balance. A lawsuit against the plaintiff was filed, but ultimately dismissed for lack of service. The plaintiff filed this motion against the law firm for the alleged violation of the FDCPA by attempting to collect on a debt that was not legally collectible.
The law firm argued that the plaintiff did not establish that it had knowledge that the plaintiff was not obligated to pay the debt and that one of the other defendants had already paid the maximum statutory damages so any further liability was “irrelevant.”
Judge Susan M. Brnovich of the District Court for the District of Arizona cited a number of cases indicating that plaintiffs are not obligated to dispute debts prior to initiating lawsuits against collectors, and that the plaintiff receiving the maximum amount of statutory damages from one defendant does not preclude seeking the same amount from other defendants. “While the actions of TCS and AEL related to the same debt, TCS’s liability went beyond violations of the FDCPA,” Judge Brnovich wrote. “TCS’ conduct is therefore distinct from AEL’s conduct.”
