The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has affirmed a lower court’s ruling that a credit bureau did not violate the Fair Credit Reporting Act and was not obligated to reinvestigate disputed claims on an individual’s credit report because the individual did not directly submit the request.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Warner v. Experian Information Systems can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff’s case was one of 29 different lawsuits that alleged similar facts and one of those cases — McIntyre v. Experian — was designated as the “bellwether” case for all of the different suits. In that case, the plaintiff hired a credit repair organization and signed over power of attorney. The credit repair organization sent letters to the defendant contending that several items in the plaintiff’s credit report were inaccurate. The plaintiff admitted he had no input into the content or preparation of the letters and did not see them before they were sent. When he was given a copy of the letters to review, the plaintiff admitted that the items being disputed were not inaccurate.
The defendant sent the plaintiff a letter saying it would not initiate any disputes because it deemed the letters to be “suspicious.” The defendant provided contact information to the plaintiff to follow up, which the plaintiff did not do.
Because it did not initiate an investigation, the plaintiff sued Experian for allegedly violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act. A District Court judge granted summary judgment in favor of the defendant, ruling that the defendant’s duty to investigate claims was dependent on the plaintiff himself submitting the dispute notifications.
Section 1681i of the FCRA says that credit bureaus must “conduct a reasonable reinvestigation” when an item in the consumer’s credit file “is disputed by the consumer and the consumer notifies the agency directly … of such dispute.” Because the plaintiff was not involved in the preparation of the letters in any way in this case, the defendant had no duty to investigate the disputes.
The Ninth Circuit saw no reason to overrule the lower court.
“This case does not involve a letter sent to a consumer reporting agency by a consumer’s attorney,” the Appeals Court wrote. “Nor does it involve one family member assisting another by sending a letter on the other’s behalf. It does not even involve a letter sent by a credit repair agency that a consumer reviewed and approved before it was submitted. We do not decide whether, in any of these circumstances, a consumer reporting agency would have a duty to reinvestigate. We only hold that, in this case, where [the plaintiff] played no role in preparing the letters and did not review them before they were sent, the letters sent by [the credit repair organization] did not come directly from [the plaintiff].”
