A District Court judge in Louisiana has granted motions to dismiss filed by three credit reporting agencies that were accused of violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act, ruling that the agencies are not debt collectors and that the plaintiff’s complaint offered nothing more than recitations of the statutes she claimed were violated.
The background: The plaintiff, who represented herself, accused the defendants of failing to validate a debt and of mishandling her credit reporting disputes.
- The plaintiff filed suit against the three CRAs, alleging they failed to validate a debt in violation of the FDCPA and reported or failed to correct inaccurate credit information in violation of two sections of the FCRA.
- The plaintiff claimed that inaccurate information was reported about her, that she disputed the information, and that the defendants failed to correct or remove it, damaging her credit score and causing financial harm.
- While the complaint devoted separate pages to each of the three defendants, the factual allegations on each page named only one of them.
- The defendants moved to dismiss, arguing that they are consumer reporting agencies, not debt collectors subject to the FDCPA, that the furnisher provision of the FCRA does not apply to them, and that the complaint lacked the factual detail needed to state a claim. One defendant argued that any amendment would be futile and asked that the claims be dismissed for good.
The ruling: Judge Greg Gerard Guidry of the District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana granted both motions to dismiss.
- On the FDCPA claim, Judge Guidry noted that the statute applies only to debt collectors, and the plaintiff alleged only that the defendants engaged in credit reporting, not that any of them ever attempted to collect a debt from her.
- On the claim that the defendants failed to reasonably reinvestigate her disputes, the judge wrote that the complaint never identified the allegedly inaccurate account, explained why the information was wrong, or said when any dispute was submitted, concluding that its assertions “merely track the statutory language” of the FCRA.
- The furnisher claim failed as well, the judge ruled, because that section of the FCRA governs the companies that supply information to credit reporting agencies, not the agencies themselves.
- The FDCPA and furnisher claims were dismissed with prejudice, but because the plaintiff was representing herself and had not previously amended her complaint, the reinvestigation claim was dismissed without prejudice, and she was given 21 days to file an amended complaint.
