In a case that was defended by David Shaver at Surdyk, Dowd & Turner, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit yesterday ruled that a plaintiff must allege more than being confused by a collection letter to have standing to sue, but also ruled that the plaintiff in this particular case did have standing and that the letter that was sent did violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. The Court did however, vacate the lower court’s grant of class certification and remanded the case back to the District Court to determine whether the other members of the class have standing under this new ruling.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Huber v. Simon’s Agency can be accessed by clicking here.
Readers of AccountsRecovery.net should be fairly familiar with this case, which I have written about on a number of occasions over the past few years (here, here, and here). The plaintiff incurred four separate debts to a medical facility. Each of the four debts were placed with the defendant for collection. The defendant sent the plaintiff a letter after it received each debt from the creditor. Each debt was given its own account number, and the four accounts were aggregated under a master number. The final collection letter listed the amount due as a result of the fourth visit, the amount due from the three previous visits (under the heading: various other accounts total balance) and the sum of the two amounts. The plaintiff sued, arguing, in part, that the fourth letter was not clear about how much was owed. Was it the amount, the amount in the “various other accounts” box or the sum of the two?
Agreeing with the District Court that the plaintiff had standing, the Appeals Court made its determination on different grounds than the District Court judge. The plaintiff in this case did not suffer an informational injury — where the defendant omitted information to which the plaintiff was entitled — nor was confusion alone sufficient. “… to analogize to the tort of fraudulent misrepresentation, a § 1692e claimant must suffer some cognizable harm that flows from that confusion,” the Appeals Court wrote.
