EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is part of a series that is sponsored by WebRecon. WebRecon identifies serial plaintiffs lurking in your database BEFORE you contact them and expose yourself to a likely lawsuit. Protect your company from as many as one in three new consumer lawsuits by scrubbing your consumers through WebRecon first. Want to learn more? Call (855) WEB-RECON or email admin@webrecon.net today! Thanks to WebRecon for sponsoring this series.
DISCLAIMER: This article is based on a complaint. The defendant has not responded to the complaint to present its side of the case. The claims mentioned are accusations and should be considered as such until and unless proven otherwise.
Let me give you a little peek behind the curtain … Every Tuesday and Friday, I go through the complaints logged by WebRecon, looking for one that is interesting enough to write about. There can be any number of reasons why a complaint may meet the “interesting enough to write about” threshold. The behavior alleged can be egregious. The claim can be novel. The claim can be indicative of a trend. Today’s complaint is part of a trend that we have seen a lot of in the past few months — an undated Model Validation Notice — but that is not why I am writing about it. Let’s see if you can pick up what made me decide to write about this case …
A class-action suit has been filed against a debt collector in New Jersey federal court, accusing the defendant of violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by sending an undated Model Validation Notice, rendering the plaintiff misled because he had no idea what “today” and “now” meant in the Notice’s itemization table that sought to collect a debt of $11.14.
Yes, that’s right. It’s not a typo. A defendant is facing an FDCPA class-action over an unpaid debt of $11.14. This might be the poster case for why you should scrub your accounts against WebRecon’s database before initiating any collection action. The plaintiff in this case appears to have filed 13 lawsuits against collection operations in the past, according to WebRecon.
A copy of the complaint can be accessed using case number 23-cv-20526 or by clicking here.
There isn’t much that separates this lawsuit from most of the other undated MVN lawsuits that have been filed. The lack of a date on the MVN allegedly violated Sections 1692e, 1692e(2)(A), 1692e(10), 1692f, 1692g(a)(1), and 1692g(b) because it made the letter suspicious, misleading, and deceptive. The lack of a date also made it impossible for the plaintiff to verify he had been given the full 30-day validation window prescribed by the FDCPA, according to the complaint. The class seeks to include anyone else from New Jersey who received an undated Model Validation Notice from the defendant.
