Judge Esther Salas of the District Court for the District of New Jersey was on a roll last Thursday, denying class certification in two separate Fair Debt Collection Practices Act cases against the same defendant, largely for the same reasons. I wrote about one yesterday, and today I write about the other one, in which the plaintiff claimed the defendant violated the statute by not disclosing that a letter containing a settlement offer was sent after the statute of limitations had expired.
The Background: The plaintiff defaulted on a Capital One credit card debt in 2010. In 2015, the plaintiff received the letter in question from the defendant, which offered pre-approved discounts to settle the debt.
- The plaintiff claims the attempt to collect on the debt came after the statute of limitations for contract terms in Virginia — where Capital One is based — had expired.
- The letter didn’t mention that the debt was time-barred or that a settlement or payment could restart the statute of limitations, according to the plaintiff’s complaint. This apparently led the plaintiff to believe that she would be sued by the defendant to recover the debt.
- The plaintiff filed a class-action lawsuit against the defendant, seeking to include anyone else in New Jersey who received a similar letter where the statute of limitations had expired.
The Ruling: Similar to yesterday’s post, this case boiled down to the predominance prong of the class-action certification test. An individualized inquiry would be needed to determine which choice-of-law provision would have applied to every member of the class, Judge Salas determined. “There is essentially no evidence that a uniform contractual choice of law provision applied across the class,” she wrote. “To the contrary, the agreements that Capital One was required to post on its website do not seem to reflect all of the historical terms that governed cardholders, which may have included yet other choice-of-law provisions.”
- The plaintiff attempted to use the agreements that were posted by Capital One to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s website, but that didn’t convince Judge Salas either.
- Judge Salas also noted that it was not clear from the proposed class that all members had standing to sue because the class definition said nothing about the adverse effects stemming from the letters that were sent.
