The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has granted an en banc rehearing request filed by a collector in a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case, and will determine for itself whether the plaintiff had standing to file his lawsuit in the first place, rather than remanding the case back to the District Court to make that determination.
A copy of the petition, filed by the defendant-appellee in Nyberg v. Portfolio Recovery Associates can be accessed by clicking here. A copy of the Court’s decision to grant the petition can be accessed by clicking here.
The Ninth Circuit remanded the case back in March because it was only on appeal where the topic of whether the plaintiff had standing to sue was first brought up. The plaintiff, according to the Appeals Court, did not have an opportunity to present specific facts to support his case that he had standing to sue, after he accused the defendant of violating the FDCPA by falsely asserting a claim when it sued the plaintiff for an unpaid credit card debt and then dismissed the suit for unknown reasons.
In seeking an en banc rehearing before the entire panel of Ninth Circuit judges, the defendant-appellee argued that the Court has, in a number of previous cases, resolved the question of standing on its own, without remanding the case back to the District Court for a determination.
“Although the panel acknowledged its duty to determine whether Appellant had carried his burden of establishing standing, its decision to remand the matter improperly delegated that responsibility to the district court and was based on the panel’s conclusion that ‘[Appellant] did not have an opportunity to present ‘specific facts’ supporting his standing,’ ” the defendant-appellee wrote in its petition. ” Mem. Disp. at 3. “Respectfully, this was both factually and legally incorrect.”
