Fair Debt Collection Practices Act-

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Mary Nabozny v. Optio Solutions LLC

Case No.: 22-1202

Officials: Sykes, Chief Judge, and Rovner and Jackson-Akiwumi, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Fair Debt Collection Practices Act-

Nabozny received a letter at her residence in Wisconsin, offering to resolve an outstanding credit card debt. The letter contained essential details about her debt, such as the creditor’s information, the amount owed, her account number, and her name and address. This correspondence came from Optio, operating under the name Qualia, but it was printed and sent by RevSpring, a third-party printing and mailing service. It’s important to note that Nabozny never provided consent to Optio to share her debt information with RevSpring.

In response, Nabozny initiated a potential class action lawsuit, claiming that Optio’s communication with RevSpring violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, specifically 15 U.S.C. 1692. This law states that “a debt collector may not communicate, in connection with the collection of any debt, with any person other than the consumer” without the consumer’s explicit consent. The Seventh Circuit Court upheld the dismissal of Nabozny’s lawsuit, citing a lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. They determined that Nabozny lacked the legal standing to bring this lawsuit because she had not experienced any concrete harm or injury.

The court also pointed out that recent decisions in other judicial circuits had established that sharing a debtor’s data with a third-party mail vendor for the purpose of populating and sending a collection letter did not cause the kind of harm recognized by our legal system as sufficient to support a federal court case under Article III of the Constitution.

Affirmed.

Decided 10/23/23

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