A District Court judge in Maryland has granted a defendant’s motion to dismiss a Fair Credit Reporting Act lawsuit filed against a credit reporting agency, ruling that alleging two pieces of reported information are inconsistent with each other is not the same as alleging that either one of them is actually inaccurate.
The background: The plaintiff, who represented herself in the case, filed suit over four tradelines on her credit report, claiming they contained “inaccurate, incomplete, and internally inconsistent information.”
- The centerpiece of the complaint was a credit card account that was reported as being 90 days past due in February, while the same tradeline also listed a date of last payment that came more than a year later. The plaintiff claimed the two entries were “facially inconsistent and cannot logically coexist.”
- The plaintiff alleged she disputed the tradelines with the defendant, which she claimed responded with “automated or superficial verification methods rather than conducting a reasonable investigation,” and continued publishing the information to third parties.
- She claimed damage to her credit reputation, emotional distress, anxiety, and lost credit opportunities, and accused the defendant of failing to follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy and failing to conduct a reasonable reinvestigation of her disputes.
- The defendant moved to dismiss, arguing the reporting was accurate, that the plaintiff lacked standing, and that the complaint was an impermissible “shotgun pleading” too vague to answer.
The ruling: Judge Brendan A. Hurson of the District Court for the District of Maryland granted the motion to dismiss.
- Judge Hurson first rejected the defendant’s standing argument, ruling that allegations that inaccurate information was disseminated to third parties, along with the claimed reputational and emotional harm, were enough to get in the courthouse door.
- The shotgun pleading argument fared no better. The judge noted the defendant’s own filing undermined the claim, observing that nothing demonstrates a complaint’s general coherence better than a defendant’s ability to respond to it on the merits, which the defendant did.
- Where the case fell apart was on the substance. The plaintiff never actually denied that her account was 90 days past due in February, and never contested that she made the payment on the date reported. Without that, the judge was unable to draw a reasonable inference that the alleged inconsistency rendered the report inaccurate or misleading, an essential element of both types of FCRA claims.
- The allegations regarding the other three accounts were too vague and conclusory to plausibly allege any inaccuracy at all, the judge ruled, noting the facts alleged in the complaint were “thin.”
