In a case that was defended by Dale Golden and Joe Proulx of Martin Golden Lyons Watts Morgan, a District Court judge in Alabama has granted a defendant’s motion for summary judgment in a Fair Credit Reporting Act and Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case, ruling that an illegible signature on a work order was not sufficient to allow the defendant to determine that the account was someone else’s and not hers.
The background: This plaintiff is a private duty nurse, who, on behalf of her patient, contacted a cable company to sign the patient up for Internet service. The account was opened in the plaintiff’s name and the appointment confirmation and other communications were sent to the plaintiff’s email address. Despite the plaintiff’s claims that she did not agree to be financially responsible for the account, the company sent bills to the plaintiff’s name at a different address. The account eventually ended up being sent to the defendant for collection.
- The plaintiff disputed the debt, asserting that the account was in fact her patient’s account and not hers, and that she had not agreed to be responsible for it.
- The plaintiff sued the cable company and reached a settlement. A separate lawsuit was filed against the defendant, which attempted to collect on the unpaid debt.
The ruling: In its motion for summary judgment, the defendant argued that it could not be held liable under the FCRA or FDCPA because the plaintiff failed to provide sufficient evidence that the information it reported was inaccurate. Judge Jeffrey U. Beaverstock of the District Court for the Southern District of Alabama found that while the plaintiff had disputed the debt, the information provided by the cable company — confirming that the account was in the plaintiff’s name — was valid.
- The plaintiff argued that if the cable company or the defendant had compared the signature on the work order that was signed by the patient and the signature that the cable company had for the plaintiff, it would have realized the account was for someone else.
- The court noted that even if the illegible signature on the work order were considered, it did not prove that the plaintiff was not responsible for the account.
- Furthermore, Judge Beaverstock determined that the plaintiff’s subjective intent regarding responsibility for the account did not provide a straightforward, objectively verifiable dispute, as required by the FCRA. The court emphasized that under FCRA regulations, a reasonable investigation of the dispute did not reveal any actionable inaccuracies in the information that was reported to the credit bureaus.
- The plaintiff’s claim under the FDCPA was similarly dismissed, as the court found no evidence that the defendant knew or should have known that the information it reported was false.
