A District Court judge in Oregon has affirmed the dismissal of a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act lawsuit, determining that a recent ruling from the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is not an apples-to-apples comparison to the plaintiff’s case.
The Background: The plaintiff incurred a number of medical bills that were owed to the same facility. The bills were not paid, and the account was placed with one of the defendants for collection. The defendants filed a collection lawsuit. Even though the plaintiff filed a response to the collection lawsuit, the defendants filed a motion for default, which was denied.
- After dismissing the suit because it was filed more than a year after the defendant filed its collection lawsuit, the Ninth Circuit issued a ruling in Brown v. Transworld Systems, in which the Court created a new test for determining which acts constitute separate independent violations of the FDCPA, for the purpose of restarting the one-year statute of limitations.
- The plaintiff filed a motion to alter or amend the judgment based on that ruling.
The Decision: What separates this case from Brown is timing, noted Judge Ann Aiken of the District Court for the District of Oregon. In Brown, while the service and filing of a lawsuit may constitute separate independent violations, service of the suit has to occur before the lawsuit is filed. In this case, service occurred after the lawsuit was filed. To that end, the service of the suit “is an act taken to reaffirm the legitimacy of the already-filed suit,” Judge Aiken wrote.
