A District Court judge in Nevada has granted a defendant’s motion for summary judgment and denied the plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment in a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case, ruling that the defendant could not have known it was contacting the plaintiff at an inconvenient time after the plaintiff told the defendant he was at work and could not talk during a prior conversation.
The Background: The plaintiff was contacted by a representative of the defendant on his cell phone at 8:57am on July 20, 2022. The plaintiff answered the call, but repeatedly told the representative he could not talk because he was at work. The plaintiff said he would try to call back later or the representative could call back at another time. The plaintiff didn’t indicate what times would be convenient or inconvenient.
- The representative called the plaintiff at 2:03pm on July 28, 2022 and again the plaintiff informed the representative that he was at work and it was not a good time to talk.
- The plaintiff filed suit, alleging the second call violated Section 1692c(a)(1) of the FDCPA because the defendant knew or should have known that it was an inconvenient time, and Section 1692c(a)(3) of the FDCPA for calling him at his place of employment.
The Ruling: By informing the representative that he was at work, the defendant should have known that the plaintiff worked “normal business hours” and that the second call was therefore inconvenient, the plaintiff claimed. But the second call was at a different time of the day and a different day of the week and there was nothing in the first call to let the defendant know what was convenient or inconvenient for the plaintiff, noted Judge Andrew P. Gordon of the District Court for the District of Nevada. The defendant contacted the plaintiff within the timeframe allowed by the FDCPA and was not on notice that it was calling at an inconvenient time, so the defendant’s motion on the 1692c(a)(1) claim was granted.
- Because the defendant contacted the plaintiff on his cell phone, that does not qualify as calling a place of employment, Judge Gordon ruled.
