A District Court judge in Massachusetts has allowed a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act claim against a collection law firm to survive a motion for judgment on the pleadings while dismissing several related state law claims as preempted by the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
The background: The dispute began with a store visit that the plaintiff says ended with him unknowingly financing a phone he never wanted.
- Several years ago, the plaintiff went to a carrier-branded retail store to fix cellular service problems at his home and told a salesperson he wanted to keep using his existing phone.
- The salesperson allegedly said the phone was incompatible with the network but that the plaintiff qualified for a free-phone promotion if he signed up that day, then handed him a tablet showing a blank screen and asked him to sign, explaining that it authorized service and that a copy would be emailed to him.
- The plaintiff argued he did not realize the blank screen committed him to four separate agreements, including one that financed the purchase of a phone for $565 and two that required arbitration.
- After returning home, he discovered the network did not reach his town, and when he tried to return the phone and cancel days later, the retailer refused, citing the expiration of a 14-day window.
- The carrier canceled the service, but device-payment bills of $23.58 a month continued for years; the plaintiff did not pay, and the account was placed with three debt collectors, including the defendant.
- The plaintiff disputed the debt in a series of demand letters and alleged the collectors kept reporting the unpaid balance to the credit bureaus without noting the dispute, dropping his credit score to 606 and costing him credit approvals, a favorable interest rate, and housing opportunities.
- Representing himself, the plaintiff eventually sued under the FDCPA and a range of state laws, and the defendant moved for judgment on the pleadings, arguing that the claims against it were filed too late and that it had closed the account years earlier and never contacted the bureaus.
The ruling: Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts granted the defendant’s motion in part and denied it in part, leaving the consumer’s core federal claim intact.
- The judge found the FCRA preempted the state law claims that rested on the defendant’s alleged credit reporting, including slander of credit, negligence, tortious interference, and negligent infliction of emotional distress, because federal law bars states from imposing their own rules on the duties of companies that furnish information to the bureaus.
- On the FDCPA claim, the judge noted the statute’s one-year filing deadline and acknowledged that the only dated allegation against the defendant fell well outside it, but, reading the self-represented plaintiff’s complaint generously, treated a paragraph describing a 30-month stretch of collection and reporting as alleging conduct as recent as last August.
- Read that way, the judge concluded, the complaint plausibly alleged a violation of the FDCPA provision barring false or misleading representations, which covers a collector’s failure to report that a debt is disputed, so he declined to carve up the single count that housed all of the plaintiff’s FDCPA theories.
- The judge dismissed the claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress, finding that repeated calls and notices, without more, did not clear the high bar of conduct that is “utterly intolerable in a civilized community.”
- He also dismissed a standalone claim under the state debt-collection statute because it carries no private right of action, but let the state consumer protection claim proceed, reasoning that an FDCPA violation is an automatic violation of that statute and that the plaintiff had alleged real economic harm.
- In a footnote, the judge flagged genuine doubt about whether the case was timely at all, pointing to the defendant’s assertion that it had closed the account years earlier and never reported anything, a factual dispute he could not resolve on the pleadings.
