10-2045 Tinsley v. Integrity Financial Partners, Inc.

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Consumer Protection
FDCPA

15 U.S.C. 1692c(c) of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act does not prohibit debt collectors from contacting a debtor’s legal counsel as well as the debtor himself, once the debtor refuses to pay.

“Subsections (a) and (b) provide valuable context. Tinsley’s argument makes hash of them, because if the word ‘consumer’ is replaced by ‘lawyer’ (whether because a lawyer is a ‘consumer’ or because a communication to a lawyer is an indirect communication to a consumer) both subsections become gibberish.”

“Subsection (a)(2) tells us that a debt collector who knows that a consumer is represented by an attorney must communicate only with the lawyer. Replace the word ‘attorney’ in this subsection with ‘consumer,’ and it goes haywire. It would then say that, if a debt collector knows that a consumer is represented by a consumer, the debt collector must communicate with the consumer rather than the consumer. The problem is not simply that the words ‘consumer’ and ‘attorney’ must mean different things in this subsection (which in connection with §1692c(d) implies that they mean different things throughout §1692c). It is that the point of subsection (a)(2) is to tell the debt collector that it is OK to communicate with the debtor’s attorney even when it is forbidden to communicate with the debtor. On Tinsley’s understanding of ‘consumer’ and §1692a(2), by contrast, once a debt collector knows that a debtor has a lawyer, it becomes illegal to communicate with either the debtor or the lawyer—because any communication with the lawyer is an ‘indirect’ communication with the client, and thus forbidden. That would be an implausible understanding of §1692c(a)(2). Why would Congress have provided that hiring a lawyer makes it impossible for the debtor and debt collector to communicate through counsel?”

Affirmed.

10-2045 Tinsley v. Integrity Financial Partners, Inc.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Holderman, J., Easterbrook, J.

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