A District Court judge in Indiana has denied a plaintiff’s motion for reconsideration after partially granting a defendant’s motion for summary judgment, ruling that the Court did not make an error by misinterpreting Section 1692e(8) of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Johnson v. Waypoint Resource Group can be accessed by clicking here.
Back in April, Judge Robert L. Miller, Jr. of the District Court for the Southern District of Indiana partially granted the defendant’s motion for summary judgment, after it was accused of violating the FDCPA because it did not properly mark an account as disputed because the information that was sent in the dispute letter by the plaintiff did not match any account information the defendant had on file, and a search of the last four digits of the plaintiff’s Social Security number turned up more than 200 matches in its system.
In filing her motion, the plaintiff argues that whether the defendant should have known about the dispute is a question of fact and not a question of law and that she is entitled to summary judgment. But the cases she cited in making her argument “don’t say that answering what a debt collector should’ve known under 1692e(8) is a legal question,” so the plaintiff hasn’t met the threshold for having the ruling overturned, Judge Miller wrote.
The plaintiff also attempted to argue that a defendant is liable as a matter of law if it ignores a debt dispute letter and can’t claim the bona fide error defense. But the plaintiff did not do a good enough job of lining up the facts of her case with that of the precedent she cited, “much less show that the court committed manifest error by denying both motions for summary judgment as to the § 1692e(8) claim,” Judge Miller wrote.
