A District Court judge in New York has not been convinced by a defendant that a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case filed against it should remain in federal court and has remanded the case back to state court where it was originally filed, disagreeing with the defendant’s argument that the final ruling in Hunstein actually confers standing for the plaintiff.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Pearl v. DCM Services can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff filed suit in New York state court, after which the defendant removed the case to federal court. At this point, the war on whether the plaintiff had standing or not began. The defendant argued that, based on the Supreme Court’s ruling in TransUnion v. Ramirez, “a plaintiff need only show that his alleged injury is similar in kind to the harm addressed by a common-law cause of action, not that it is similar in degree.” Like in Hunstein, disclosure of private information is a concrete harm because it is similar in “kind” to the tort of public disclosure of private facts, the defendant argued.
But Judge Orelia E. Merchant of the District Court for the Eastern District of New York, saw it a different way. The disclosure of private information to mail vendors and other third-party entities like skiptracers, bankruptcy probate providers, and scrubbing services does not involve publication and therefore is not closer enough to the public disclosure of private facts to confer standing, she ruled. A number of other cases in the Circuit, including at least one other by the plaintiff, have also been dismissed on similar grounds, Judge Merchant noted.
The defendant argued that this case was different because the plaintiff asked for actual damages in the complaint, but including “stock language” like this is not enough to meet the threshold burden, Judge Merchant ruled. “The inclusion of these two words in Plaintiff’s demand, without further substantiating allegations, does not meet this burden,” Judge Merchant wrote.
