A Magistrate Judge in Ohio has recommended granting a defendant’s motion for summary judgment in a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case, ruling that a consumer who demanded a collector stop calling him never put that request in writing, and that the collector stopped calling anyway.
The background: The plaintiff allegedly owed about $23,000 in medical debt to a hospital, which assigned the account to the defendant for collection.
- Starting in late 2022, the plaintiff claimed, the defendant’s representatives called his cell phone without identifying who they were, demanded personal information, made disrespectful statements, and hung up on him when he refused to answer their questions.
- The plaintiff said he told the defendant he was unaware of the debt and could not afford to pay it, and that he demanded the calls stop in November 2023 and made several more cease-contact requests after that, but the calls kept coming.
- He sued, accusing the defendant of calling at inconvenient times, continuing to call after he asked it to stop, using harassing tactics, and misrepresenting its legal right to keep calling once it knew the calls were unwelcome, in violation of the FDCPA and Ohio’s consumer protection statute.
- The defendant’s records told a different story. Its president attested that the company had no record of any written communication from the plaintiff, and that the plaintiff called the defendant in December 2023 to demand it stop calling. Staff notes memorialized the demand that “we don’t call,” and the account was coded “CEASE COMMUNICATION” two days later. The defendant said it never called him again.
- The plaintiff did not file a response opposing the motion for summary judgment.
The ruling: Judge S. Courter M. Shimeall of the District Court for the Southern District of Ohio recommended granting the defendant’s motion on the FDCPA claim.
- The judge wrote that the FDCPA gives consumers three options: request in writing that a collector stop communicating, do nothing, or tell the collector that particular times or places are inconvenient. The plaintiff did none of those things, and a verbal request to stop calling is legally ineffective under the statute.
- The harassment claim failed because the plaintiff offered no evidence that the content of any call was abusive or that the calls were excessive in frequency, and the uncontradicted evidence showed the defendant stopped calling after his verbal request.
- Even if a representative told the plaintiff the defendant had a legal right to keep calling, that statement was not materially false or misleading, because no written cease request had been made, and the plaintiff never showed he relied on the statement to his detriment.
