A District Court judge in New Jersey has denied a defendant’s motion for summary judgment, ruling that the plaintiff has standing to pursue his Fair Debt Collection Practices Act lawsuit — “however slight” that standing is, noted the judge.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Tomaine v. Selip & Stylianou can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff defaulted on a credit card debt and the defendant filed a collection lawsuit to recover the balance. A default judgment was entered against the plaintiff in the amount of $11,951.32. A few months later, the plaintiff filed for bankruptcy protection and listed the debt among his financial obligations. For the next four months, the defendant sought to execute on the judgment, proposing a writ for $14,656.36 and obtaining a bank levy of $278.75 from an account held by the plaintiff. The defendant also filed a motion to turn over the funds in the levied bank account and submitted a certificate showing an outstanding balance of $14,857.26. Two months later, the defendant sent the plaintiff a collection letter to recover the outstanding balance.
The plaintiff filed suit, alleging the defendant violated sections 1692e, 1692e(2)(A), 1692e(2)(B), 1692e(5), 1692e(10), 1692f, and 1692f(1) of the FDCPA because the defendant allegedly attempted to collect more than it was entitled to in the proposed writ, that the certificate in support of the motion to turn over the levied bank funds included a number in excess of the amount actually owed, and that the collection letter attempted to collect post-judgment interest in excess of what the defendant was entitled to collect.
The defendant sought a motion for summary judgment on the grounds the plaintiff lacked standing to sue. And, Judge Kevin McNulty of the District Court for the District of New Jersey mostly agreed with the defendant that much of what was alleged did not rise to the level of the plaintiff suffering a concrete injury and thus having standing to sue. Where the defendant ran into its problems, according to Judge McNulty, was with the bank levy.
“This improper hold on funds may have been a corrected or correctable mistake, but the lack of access to assets amounts to a monetary harm, however slight,” Judge McNulty wrote. “Indeed, courts in this and other circuits have noted that ‘a relatively insignificant monetary loss’ is sufficient to establish an injury-in-fact.”
