A District Court judge in Arizona has dismissed a consumer’s Fair Credit Reporting Act lawsuit against two credit reporting agencies, ruling that accurately reported late payments do not become inaccurate simply because someone other than the consumer may have caused them.
The background: The case grew out of a string of failed credit card payments that the plaintiff insisted were never his fault.
- The plaintiff held a credit card account issued by a lender and, beginning in June 2021, made roughly 14 unsuccessful attempts to pay it through the Automated Clearing House (ACH) system.
- A $650 payment finally processed on August 4, 2021 through an alternative payment method, but the lender reported the account as 30 days late for June and 60 days late for July.
- The two defendants, both credit reporting agencies, included those late-payment notations in the plaintiff’s consumer reports.
- The plaintiff disputed the notations as inaccurate in September 2025 and submitted documentation of the payment errors, but the agencies reinvestigated and left the late marks in place.
- The plaintiff, an Army intelligence analyst who needed good credit to keep his security clearance, said he was forced to explain the marks to his superiors and that the ordeal contributed to anxiety, migraines, and an eventual medical retirement.
- He sued in December 2025, alleging the agencies failed to follow reasonable procedures to assure accuracy and failed to conduct a reasonable reinvestigation under the FCRA.
The ruling: Judge Sharad H. Desai of the District Court for the District of Arizona granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss, concluding that the plaintiff had never alleged a genuine inaccuracy.
- Under binding Ninth Circuit precedent, a consumer must first show that a report was inaccurate, and because the plaintiff conceded his June and July payments were not satisfied until August, the late notations were accurate.
- Credit reporting agencies, the judge observed, “are not tribunals” and are not equipped to decide who is to blame for a late payment; whether the plaintiff, his own bank, or the lender caused the failed transfers was a dispute among those parties, not an inaccuracy by the agencies.
- The claims also failed under the “objectively and readily verifiable” standard the plaintiff urged the court to adopt, because the lateness of the payments was itself easy to verify.
- In a pointed footnote, the judge called the plaintiff’s reliance on a furnisher case “borderline frivolous,” noted that lawyers from the same firm had made the same error before him in the past, and warned that continued reliance on furnisher law to attack credit reporting agencies could prompt an order to show cause why sanctions should not be imposed.
- The judge dismissed both claims with prejudice and denied leave to amend, finding that any amendment would be futile.
