Consumer Protection — Dunning letters

Listen to this article

United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Civil

Consumer Protection — Dunning letters

Dunning letters containing urgent language do not overshadow or violate the debtor’s right to notification that he has 30 days to object.

“The dunning letter that Global Credit sent to Zemeckis, at worst, contains puffery. Its suggestions to ‘take action now’ and call ‘today’ did not impose a deadline that contradicted her right to a thirty-day validation period. The requests that she call ‘now’ or ‘today’ were not tantamount to a request for payment, nor would an unsophisticated consumer understand them as such. Accord Terran v. Kaplan, 109 F.3d 1428, 1434 (9th Cir. 1997) (holding that a request for immediate telephone contact does not overshadow the mandated validation notice, especially since ‘the challenged language . . . [did] not require payment immediately’ (emphasis in original) (internal quotation marks omitted)).”

Affirmed.

11-2334 Zemeckis v. Global Credit & Collection Corp.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Manning, J., Flaum, J.