A District Court judge in Ohio has granted a motion to dismiss filed by two defendants — a collection attorney and a debt buyer — that were sued for violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by a company who was subpoenaed for information and alleged the subpoenas were intended to harass the company.
The background: The plaintiff, a company that aggregates and provides publicly available court data to customers, found itself on the receiving end of multiple subpoenas tied to three separate state court collection cases. The plaintiff claimed it had no direct involvement in those cases and no relationship with the underlying defendants.
- The subpoenas required the plaintiff to appear for depositions and produce documents. The plaintiff argued the requests were defective and overly burdensome, claiming they “never described with reasonable particularity the matters for examination.”
- After objecting to the subpoenas, the plaintiff alleged the defendants doubled down by amending one subpoena to accelerate the deposition timeline, making it “less reasonable and more burdensome.” The plaintiff also pointed to a subsequent subpoena directed at an affiliated individual seeking financial records and trade secrets as further evidence of alleged harassment.
- Ultimately, the plaintiff filed suit, asserting FDCPA violations, along with state law claims for negligence and punitive damages.
The ruling: Judge Edmund A. Sargus, Jr. of the District Court for the Southern District of Ohio dismissed the FDCPA claims with prejudice, centering his analysis on a key issue that will resonate with industry professionals: whether the subpoenas qualified as “communications in connection with the collection of a debt.” His answer: They did not.
- Relying on established precedent, the judge emphasized that a communication must have an “animating purpose” of inducing payment from a debtor. Here, the plaintiff was not a debtor, had no relationship with the debt, and the subpoenas themselves contained no demand for payment, no balance information, and no consequences tied to non-payment.
- Judge Sargus acknowledged that litigation activity can sometimes support FDCPA claims, but drew a clear distinction. These subpoenas were directed to a third party as part of discovery, not to a consumer as part of a collection strategy.
- “The Court expresses no view as to whether the subpoenas were proper or directed to the correct non-party… [only] that the animating purpose… was not to induce payment of a debt,” Judge Sargus wrote.
- The FDCPA claims against two of the three defendants were dismissed. The plaintiff has appealed the ruling to the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
