Emerging victorious from a collection lawsuit is not enough for a plaintiff to also win a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has ruled, affirming a lower court’s decision to deny a motion for reconsideration.
The Background: The plaintiff defaulted on a credit card debt which was sold to the defendant. The defendant placed the account with a collection law firm, which filed a collection lawsuit against the plaintiff to recover the balance, but a Municipal Court judge in Pennsylvania determined that the evidence submitted by the new owner of the debt was insufficient and failed to establish a chain of custody between the original creditor and the new owner.
- The plaintiff then filed an FDCPA suit, accusing the new owner and the law firm of misrepresenting the status of the owner and attempted to collect a debt that was not owed.
- But a District Court judge granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants and also denied a motion for reconsideration.
The Appeal: The plaintiff failed to provide sufficient evidence that a reasonable juror could conclude that the defendants made false or deceptive statements, the Appeals Court affirmed.
- If the plaintiff had produced evidence that she was making payments to someone else or that she was receiving notices of payments due to someone else, her argument could have proceeded. But the plaintiff only submitted the case file from the collection lawsuit, which only proved that the new owner of the debt failed to meet the burden of proof — the Municipal Court judge did not rule on whether the new owner was the owner of the account or not.
