The Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has affirmed a summary judgment ruling in favor of a defendant that was sued under the Truth in Lending Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act over how it disclosed the terms of a truck loan and then attempted to collect on it.
The background: The dispute traces back to the plaintiff’s purchase of a truck four years ago.
- The plaintiff stopped making payments on his loan and, two years after signing the contract, sued the defendant, alleging it never provided the required Truth in Lending Act disclosures, called him using an automatic dialer and prerecorded messages, and improperly repossessed the truck after he failed to obtain insurance.
- A District Court judge in New Mexico granted summary judgment to the defendant on every claim, and the plaintiff appealed, arguing in part that the judge improperly considered new arguments raised in the defendant’s reply brief, even though he had been given permission to file a surreply responding to them.
The ruling: The Appeals Court affirmed the ruling in favor of the defendant across the board.
- Judge Robert E. Bacharach of the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, who wrote that the TILA claim was filed a year past the statute’s one-year deadline and failed on the merits anyway, because the annual percentage rate, finance charge, and amount financed all appeared in a bolded box on the first page of the contract. In the judge’s words, the disclosures were “brandished at the start of the contract.”
- The FDCPA claim failed because the defendant was not a debt collector. It was collecting its own debt, not someone else’s, and it took assignment of the contract at the time of purchase, before the account was in default.
- The TCPA claim failed because the contract contained the plaintiff’s express consent to prerecorded and autodialed calls at any number he provided in connection with the account.
- On the state law claims, the judge pointed out that the contract expressly required the plaintiff to insure the truck and authorized repossession upon default, and quoted circuit precedent in rejecting the plaintiff’s undeveloped objections: “The first task of an appellant is to explain to us why the district court’s decision was wrong.”
