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FCRA – Failure to State Claim

By: Derek Hawkins//September 21, 2021//

FCRA – Failure to State Claim

By: Derek Hawkins//September 21, 2021//

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Unensaikhan Chuluunbat, et al., v. Experian Information Solutions, Inc., et al.,

Case No.: 20-2373; 20-2392; 20-2775; 20-2776; 20-3000; 20-3351; 20-3368

Officials: WOOD, BRENNAN, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges.

Focus: FCRA – Failure to State Claim

In these consolidated cases, plaintiffs owe consumer debts they claim are not owned by the creditors listed on their credit reports. They approached the consumer reporting agencies—defendants here—and requested an investigation of their claims. The consumer reporting agencies contacted the purported creditors for verification that they owned the debts, which the creditors confirmed. Although informed of these confirmations, plaintiffs did not believe that the consumer reporting agencies investigated the claims as thoroughly as 15 U.S.C. § 1681i of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires, so they sued. But in each case the district court either dismissed their claims or granted judgment on the pleadings to the creditors.

We are tasked in this FCRA context with discerning the sometimes-murky boundary between “law” and “fact.” We hold that plaintiffs’ allegations that the creditors did not own their debts are not factual inaccuracies that the consumer reporting agencies are statutorily required to guard against and reinvestigate, but primarily legal issues outside their competency. So we affirm the district court’s decision in each case.

Affirmed

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Derek A Hawkins is Corporate Counsel, at Salesforce.

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