A District Court judge in Georgia has dismissed three separate Fair Debt Collection Practices Act lawsuits filed by a plaintiff representing himself, ruling that in each of the cases the plaintiff failed to provide enough evidence to confirm that any of the defendants were, in fact, debt collectors.
Copies of the rulings in the cases of Marshall v. Nelnet, Marshall v. Capital Accounts, and Marshall v. Central Portfolio Control et al. can be accessed by clicking here, here, and here.
In each of the three cases, the plaintiff filed a complaint and then filed motions to proceed in forma pauperis. After granting the motions, Judge Marc Treadwell of the District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, ordered the plaintiff to file amended complaints, which he did. At that point, the judge conducted a frivolity review and dismissed all three suits.
The complaints accused the defendants of engaging in “fraudulent” activities and “persistently” administering “cruel and unjust treatment” that cause the plaintiff to be “tortured for a fraction” of his life. The complaints accused the defendants of violating the FDCPA by using the plaintiff’s personal information to make fraudulent credit reports, reporting false information to the credit reporting agencies, and supplying “deceptive” forms. The complaints also accuse the defendants of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act because they unlawfully reported his credit report without a permissible purpose and “knowingly obtained fraudulent information under false pretenses.”
But to purse an FDCPA claim, the plaintiff has to allege the defendant is a debt collector. And in each of the three cases, the plaintiff failed to do that, Judge Treadwell ruled. In two of the three suits, the plaintiff only provided a letter from the defendant as evidence of an FDCPA violation, but “it is entirely unclear what information in that letter is relevant” to the plaintiff’s FDCPA claims, Judge Treadwell ruled.
