The Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have filed an amicus brief in a Fair Credit Reporting Act case before the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, asking the court to reverse a decision related to deleting information disputed by a consumer that cannot be verified by the furnisher of the information.
A copy of the brief, filed in the case of Suluki v. Credit One Bank, can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff claimed that her mother opened multiple accounts in her daughter’s name without the daughter’s knowledge or permission. After the daughter was denied a lease for an apartment, she learned of the accounts, and began disputing the information with the credit reporting agencies. The agencies forwarded the disputes to the banks that issued the cards, which included Credit One Bank. The plaintiff also called Credit One to dispute the debt and informed it that the account was opened without the daughter’s permission. The mother even called the bank and confirmed she had opened the account without her daughter’s knowledge. Credit One conducted an investigation and verified that the daughter was the accountholder who owed the debt.
The daughter sued Credit One and a District Court judge granted summary judgment for the defendant on the grounds that the daughter did not sustain any damages.
“When a furnisher is unable to determine whether the disputed information is true, the FCRA does not allow it to report back to the consumer reporting agency that its investigation verified the accuracy of that information,” the regulators wrote in their brief. “… whether Credit One violated Section 1681s-2(b) in reporting the disputed account as ‘verified’ ‘will turn on whether [Credit One] acquired sufficient evidence to support the conclusion that’ Suluki’s mother opened the account in Suluki’s name with her permission and therefore Suluki was liable for the credit card debt. If Credit One did not acquire sufficient evidence to support that conclusion, then Credit One should have reported that it could not verify the account.”
