A District Court judge in New York has granted a plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment after it sued a debt collector for allegedly violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by sending two collection letters to the plaintiff, determining that the plaintiff must have been correct when he claimed that he did not owe the debt because the collector was notified by the original creditor after sending the two letters to cancel the placement because the balance was being written off.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Lichtner v. Bureau of Accounts Control can be accessed by clicking here.
There was some discrepancy as to whether the plaintiff owed a debt to a healthcare provider named New Jersey Urology or whether it was Bergen Urological Associates. The plaintiff signed documents under the letterhead of the second company when services were rendered and it was that company that placed the account with the defendant for collection. After receiving the first letter, the plaintiff claimed he disputed the debt, although the defendant had no record of it. After sending the second letter, the defendant has a conversation from an individual identifying herself as the plaintiff’s wife, who claimed there was a problem with the creditor’s billing records. A week later, the defendant received a call from the creditor, advising it to cancel the account because a corrected claim needed to be sent to the plaintiff’s insurance carrier and the balance was being written off because the plaintiff should not have been liable for it.
The plaintiff filed suit against the collector, arguing it violated Section 1692e(2) of the FDCPA by falsely representing he owed a debt to the creditor.
Ultimately, Judge Edgardo Ramos of the District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that if the creditor canceled the placement and said the plaintiff should not be liable for the debt, there was no debt to begin with, and the defendant thus violated the strict liability statute of the FDCPA.
Curiously, the defendant does not appear to have attempted to invoke the bona fide error defense, as it is not mentioned anywhere in Judge Ramos’s ruling. The defendant did cite a case in which a judge ruled that a plaintiff must show that a debt collector knowingly misrepresented the amount of a debt in order for a violation of the FDCPA to have occurred, but Judge Ramos said that the Second Circuit has not yet adopted that proposition. “Whether the debt collector knowingly made that representation is of no moment,” he wrote.