The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has upheld a ruling in a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act Hunstein case, largely ruling the plaintiff lacks standing to pursue her claim because she did not suffer a concrete injury, but one of the three judges on the panel disagreed and wrote a dissenting opinion saying that the plaintiff should get her “day in court.”
The Background: The plaintiff filed suit, accusing the defendant of violating the FDCPA by using a third party to print and mail letters on its behalf. The plaintiff claimed that the third party was not authorized to view her information and the use of the vendor was a violation of Section 1692c(b) of the FDCPA. The judge first dismissed the case without prejudice, after which the plaintiff filed an amended complaint, leading the judge to dismiss the case again, this time with prejudice.
The Ruling: The Appeals Court agreed that the case should be dismissed, but that it should be dismissed without prejudice, which gives the plaintiff the opportunity to amend the complaint and re-file it, if she so chooses.
- The reason the case should be dismissed with prejudice, the Appeals Court ruled, is because of a precedent in the Third Circuit that holds dismissals with prejudice in cases where the plaintiff lacks standing are generally improper because the court does not have subject matter jurisdiction to reach a decision on the merits.
The Dissent: Many of the Hunstein rulings that have been issued are based on the Supreme Court’s ruling in TransUnion v. Ramirez, which holds that plaintiffs must show they suffered actual damages to have standing to sue in federal court. Simply having their information sent to a letter vendor does not count as suffering actual damages.
- But Judge Paul Brian Matey of the Third Circuit disagreed, noting that the harm suffered by the plaintiff in this case — the unauthorized disclosure of private information — bears a close relationship to the harm underlying claims for public disclosure of private facts and breach of confidence, which is enough for the plaintiff to have standing to sue.
