A District Court judge in Missouri has granted a plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment that the defendant violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by “significantly overstating” how much the plaintiff owed when garnishing her wages in attempting to collect on a judgment in had obtained, but did grant the defendant’s motion for summary judgment that it did not violate state law in Missouri with respect to a wrongful garnishment.
The Background: The plaintiff incurred a medical debt that was placed with the defendant for collection. The defendant filed a collection lawsuit against the plaintiff and the plaintiff entered into a consent judgment, but stopped sending in payments. This is where the discrepancies begin.
- The defendant filed three garnishments between 2020 and 2022 and stated that the plaintiff paid a total of $9,365.75. The defendant admitted to making a series of mistakes on the three garnishment applications, but said the plaintiff only paid $14.61 over the principal amount that was owed, and when taking into account the interest that had accrued, the actual balance after the three judgments was still $2,321.46.
- The plaintiff reached out to the defendant after the third garnishment and ultimately hired a defendant to help her figure out what was going on. She claims to owe her attorney $1,215 in legal fees for the attorney’s work in this case so far.
- The plaintiff filed suit, alleging the defendant violated the FDCPA and state law in Missouri related to a wrongful garnishment.
The Ruling: The plaintiff alleged the defendant failed to credit all of her payments, overstated the amount of interest that was owed, and overstated the principal amount of the debt.
- Looking at the details of the third garnishment, Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh, Jr. of the District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri had to break out his calculator. The defendant represented the plaintiff had paid $4,776.86 of the $9,351.14 of the initial debt and still owed $6,372.48. But state records showed the plaintiff had paid $2,271.05 in the first garnishment and $4,776.86 in the second garnishment for a total of $8,064.52. Thus, the defendant’s representation that the plaintiff still owed $6,372.48 was overstated, the judge determined. The plaintiff owed $1,343.46, not $6,372.48.
- From there, it was easy for Judge Limbaugh to determine the defendant had violated Section 1692f of the FDCPA.
- The judge did grant the defendant’s motion for summary judgment on the other two claims made by the plaintiff.
