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DISCLAIMER: This article is based on a complaint. The defendant has not responded to the complaint to present its side of the case. The claims mentioned are accusations and should be considered as such until and unless proven otherwise.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again the old saying goes. But did you know there was a second part to that old chestnut? It goes: When that doesn’t work, file a lawsuit. A plaintiff has filed a lawsuit in the District Court for the District of Minnesota, accusing the three credit reporting agencies of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act and a debt collector of violating of violating the FCRA and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act for failing to perform a reasonable investigation of her dispute, which she filed on three separate occasions after not getting the result she was looking for.
The background: The plaintiff moved into an apartment in Arizona in August 2021. By October, things weren’t working out and the plaintiff and the owner of the apartment entered into an agreement to rescind the lease and release all claims, according to the complaint. The agreement allowed the plaintiff to vacate the property and terminate her lease without incurring any fees or penalties.
- The plaintiff moved out and subsequently received an email from the owner in 2022 indicating there was an unpaid balance on her account – a termination fee for her lease.
- The plaintiff requested a validation of the debt and didn’t hear anything else about it until a year later, when she was contacted by a collection agency.
- The plaintiff again disputed the debt and was sent a debt validation via email.
- The defendant began reporting information about the debt to the credit reporting agencies.
- Last December, the plaintiff disputed the debt with all three credit reporting agencies. When the defendant verified the information it was reporting as accurate, the plaintiff turned around and disputed the debt again with all three credit reporting agencies and when that didn’t yield the results the plaintiff was looking for, she disputed the debt again. When that didn’t work, the plaintiff filed this lawsuit.
The claims: The plaintiff is accusing the three credit reporting agencies of violating Section 1681e(b) of the FCRA by failing to follow reasonable procedures to ensure the maximum possible accuracy of the information included in their credit reports. The three agencies are also accused of violating Section 1681i of the FCRA by failing to perform a reasonable investigation.
- The collection operation defendant is accused of violating Section 1681s-2(b) of the FCRA for failing to conduct an investigation of the disputed information, and for violating Sections 1692d, 1692e(2)(A), 1692e(8), 1692e(10), 1692f, and 1692f(1) of the FDCPA.
