Where Hunstein cases are being dismissed across the country on the basis that plaintiffs do not have standing to sue because they did not suffer a concrete injury, a District Court judge in Washington has denied a defendant’s motion for judgment on the pleadings in a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case involving a Hunstein claim, ruling that precedent in the Ninth Circuit gives the plaintiff standing to sue.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Jennings v. IQ Data International can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff sued the collector, alleging it violated the FDCPA when it hired a third-party vendor to print and mail her a collection letter. Because the defendant disclosed personal information about the plaintiff to the vendor, the defendant allegedly violated Section 1692c(b) of the FDCPA. It seems to be a carbon copy of the thousands of other complaints that have been filed in courts nationwide following the ruling in Hunstein v. Preferred Collection & Management Services. But where the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ultimately ruled the plaintiff did not suffer a concrete injury and thus did not have standing to sue in Hunstein, Judge Robert J. Bryan of the District Court for the Western District of Washington had to follow a different precedent.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last year issued a ruling in Tailford v. Experian Information Solutions and determined that plaintiffs have standing because the procedural violations that were alleged protected substantive rights, including privacy interests “long protected by traditional torts.”
Similar to Tailford, Judge Bryan ruled, the alleged violation of Section 1692c(b) is a “concrete injury” because it is a violation of the plaintiff’s privacy, which is “a harm that is traditionally recognized as requiring a remedy,” although the judge did not the specific injuries were set out in more detail in Tailford than they were in this case.
“The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has not ruled on whether a violation of § 1692c(b), based on the disclosure to a single party or company, without reference to injury, results in a concrete injury sufficient to confer standing in federal court,” Judge Bryan wrote. “In the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, it appears that statutory provisions that protect consumer privacy are sufficient to confer standing.”
