A District Court judge in New Jersey has granted a defendant’s motion to dismiss after it was sued for allegedly violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by referring to the original creditor as a “client” in a collection letter.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Rodriguez v. Certified Credit & Collection Bureau can be accessed by clicking here.
The defendant sent a collection letter to the plaintiff, seeking payment of $29.88 for an unpaid medical debt. In the letter, the defendant included a reference to the collection agency’s “client” and did not explicitly state that the client was the creditor to whom the debt was owed, as is required under Section 1692g of the FDCPA.
Both parties tried to use the recent decision from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Gross v. Lyons Doughty & Veldhuis, P.C., in which the appeals court overturned a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit related to how the original creditor was identified in a collection letter.
But the judge saw the Rodriguez case as distinguishable from Gross because it only referenced one client in the collection letter, not multiple parties as in Gross.
Coupling that with the plaintiff’s account number and balance, the letter “unambiguously” identified the creditor to whom the debt was owed, ruled Judge Kevin McNulty.
This was a really great result. Kudos to Lawrence Bartel, my friend and law partner, for the win and for CCCB for letting us bring the fight.