A District Court judge in New Jersey has granted motions to dismiss filed by the defendants in a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and Fair Credit Reporting Act lawsuit because the plaintiff, who was representing herself, failed to include enough facts in her complaint to adequately back up her claims.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Mills v. The Law Offices of Mitchell D. Bluhm & Associates et al. can be accessed by clicking here.
Background: In reviewing her credit report on Credit Karma earlier this year, the plaintiff noted a tradeline from the law firm defendant that was owed to a Florida healthcare facility. The plaintiff sought a validation of the debt from one of the credit reporting agencies, which it refused to do.
The Claim: The plaintiff claims that the law firm and the credit reporting agency published inaccurate and incomplete information. While she initially accused both of violating the FDCPA in her complaint, she dropped all references to that statute and instead invoked the FCRA in her opposition to the motion to dismiss filed by the credit reporting agency.
The Ruling: Regardless of the statute that the defendants allegedly violated, the plaintiff did not do a sufficient job of making her case, ruled Judge Robert B. Kugler of the District Court for the District of New Jersey. The FDCPA doesn’t apply to the credit reporting agency, and the plaintiff does not provide any facts to substantiate her claim that the information in the tradeline is inaccurate or incorrect. Finally, the FDCPA does not regulate how information is furnished to credit reporting agencies, Judge Kugler wrote.
