A District Court judge in Louisiana has allowed one claim in a consumer’s Fair Credit Reporting Act lawsuit against two credit reporting agencies to move forward while dismissing the remainder of his claims.
The background: The plaintiff, who represented himself, claimed the credit reporting agencies negligently and willfully reported inaccurate and contradictory information about him that damaged his credit.
- The centerpiece of the plaintiff’s case was a credit card account originally reported under Discover Financial Services. After Capital One completed its acquisition of Discover in May 2025, the account allegedly kept appearing under the Discover label, so the same account showed two different creditors and created what the plaintiff described as mixed-file confusion.
- The plaintiff also alleged the agencies failed to reinvestigate his disputes within the required window and failed to block information he said resulted from identity theft.
- He sought actual and punitive damages, injunctive and declaratory relief, and damages for lost business funding opportunities he valued at more than $150,000.
The ruling: Judge Susie Morgan of the District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana granted most of the agencies’ motion to dismiss but allowed a single accuracy claim to survive.
- The judge took judicial notice of the Capital One acquisition and found the plaintiff had done enough, at the pleading stage, to allege that continuing to report the account under conflicting creditor identities reflected a failure to follow reasonable procedures for maximum possible accuracy under Section 1681e(b). That claim, and only that claim, may proceed against both agencies.
- Judge Morgan rejected the agencies’ argument that they merely pass along what furnishers report, noting that credit reporting agencies carry an independent duty to evaluate the accuracy of what they publish.
- The judge dismissed the reinvestigation claims because the plaintiff never attached his dispute letters or specified when he disputed, what he sent, or which tradelines he flagged, leaving the allegations too conclusory to stand. The identity-theft blocking claims fell for the same lack of detail.
- The judge dismissed the requests for injunctive and declaratory relief, explaining that the statute reserves the power to seek injunctions for the Federal Trade Commission rather than private plaintiffs, and dismissed the business-related damages because the law does not cover reports tied to commercial transactions.
- Having already given the plaintiff three chances to amend, the judge denied another, making the dismissals final.
- The judge also flagged the plaintiff’s repeated reliance on fabricated, AI-generated citations, warning that “any future filing containing fabricated citations will result in sanctions against him personally,” a warning that later ripened into sanctions.
