Seven years after the complaint was initially filed, a District Court judge in New Jersey has adopted a Magistrate Court judge’s recommendation to dismiss a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act class-action lawsuit because the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue after allegedly receiving initial collection letters that did not include the validation statement.
The Background: The three named plaintiffs received collection letters from the defendant in 2016. The letters were allegedly the first communication between the defendant and the plaintiffs and allegedly failed to include the statement that the consumer could request the name and address of the original creditor, if different from the current creditor. The plaintiffs sought to include anyone from New Jersey who received similar letters from the defendant.
- The plaintiffs filed their suit in May 2017. In 2021, the court denied a motion from the defendant to compel arbitration. In 2022, the Magistrate Court judge ordered the plaintiffs to show cause to prove they had suffered a concrete injury and had standing to sure. Last year, the judge recommended dismissing the complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, ruling the plaintiffs lacked standing. The plaintiffs moved for reconsideration of the recommendation and that was denied. The plaintiffs then filed an objection to the denial.
- The Magistrate Court judge rejected the plaintiff’s argument that a violation of Section 1692g(a) of the FDCPA was in and of itself a concrete injury without needing to demonstrate additional harm and that the plaintiffs needed to do more than just read and review the letters in order to have standing to sue.
The Ruling: The plaintiffs continued to try and make the argument that they suffered a concrete injury because the defendant omitted the missing portion of the validation statement, which was a misrepresentation that deprived them of obtaining material information. But Judge Esther Salas of the District Court for the District of New Jersey agreed with the Magistrate Court judge and the defendant that the plaintiffs did not allege to have suffered a sufficient informational injury to have standing.
- “With no adverse effect, there is simply no standing to assert an informational injury,” Judge Salas wrote. “Here, Plaintiffs have failed to set forth any facts indicating that the information they claim they were entitled to influenced their decision-making with respect to the debt. As such, the Court finds that they have not alleged a sufficient informational injury to confer standing.”
