A District Court judge in New York has granted a defendant’s motion to dismiss a class-action lawsuit after it was sued for violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act because it sent an undated Model Validation Notice to the plaintiff, but on the grounds the plaintiff lacked standing to sue because he did not suffer a concrete injury and not on the merits of the case.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Grinblat v. Frontline Asset Strategies can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff received a letter from the defendant that listed the amount of the debt as of March 20, 2021. The letter also provided a specific date — May 23, 2021 — for the plaintiff to dispute all or part of the debt. The letter did not specify how the March 20 date was determined, nor did it specify that the plaintiff had 30 days from the date he received the letter to exercise his rights to dispute the debt or seek verification.
The plaintiff filed suit, alleging the lack of a date on the letter caused him to “expend time … to ascertain what his options and possible responses could or should be.”
On his own, Judge Nelson S. Roman of the District Court for the Southern District of New York decided to take up the issue of determining whether the plaintiff had standing to pursue his lawsuit or not. Between rulings from the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Judge Roman cited a number of cases that delineate the type of injury a plaintiff needs to suffer in order to have standing to sue. But expending time is not one of those injuries, Judge Roman noted.
“Indeed, the only cognizable harm Plaintiff asserts is for a loss of time, which he claims has been squandered as a direct consequence of Defendant’s actions,” Judge Roman wrote. “However, the expenditure of time alone is insufficient to establish standing unless it is inextricably linked to a concrete, tangible injury, which Plaintiff has not shown here. Plaintiff’s allegations, which revolve around the undated letter and the confusion that it allegedly incited, thereby fail to demonstrate a substantial, concrete harm, which is the prerequisite for the establishment of Article III standing.”
