| Summary: Plaintiff Cheryl Davis alleged that Experian, a credit reporting agency ("CRA"), violated sections of the Fair Credit Reporting Act ("FCRA") by failing to report the timely payments made to her mortgage company and failing to reasonably reinvestigate the status of the account following her dispute. Davis filed for bankruptcy in 2011 and ultimately received a discharge in 2013. Davis' consumer disclosure indicated that her mortgage account was "discharged through Chapter 13 bankruptcy/never late" in 2017. It was Davis' contention that the mortgage account was exempt from discharge because it was not discharged in bankruptcy. Upon receiving the 2017 disclosure, Davis sent Experian a letter identifying the disputed mortgage debt accompanied by documents related to her position.
The FCRA indicates that in the event a consumer disputes the accuracy of information reported, a CRA is required to perform a reasonable investigation within thirty days. Originally, the Nevada District Court determined that Davis did not notify Experian of the inaccuracy, which was the foundation of her dispute. As such, the district court determined that the credit reporting agency had no obligation to reinvestigate how the mortgage account was discharged as related to her bankruptcy.
In overturning this decision, the Ninth Circuit noted that "a notice of dispute does not require precise language and an inadequate notice does not eliminate the duty to reinvestigate altogether." The court further reasoned that "one could plausibly infer from the documents Plaintiff provided that she disputed whether the credit reporting agency had mischaracterized her mortgage debt as discharged."
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| Impact(s): FCRA compliance - for general legal review |
| Summary: The Supreme Court of the United States reversed the Ninth Circuit decision which ruled that TransUnion labeled a certified class of 8,200 individuals as terrorists thereby violating the FCRA. A jury awarded the class members millions of dollars in statutory damages.
The Court addressed two different issues in this case: inaccurate reports and improper disclosures. First, for the inaccurate reporting claim, the Court found that TransUnion had provided misleading credit reports to third-party businesses for only 1,853 class members. The Court found that the other 6,332 class members whose credit reports were not provided to third-party businesses did not suffer any harm because the files were not actually disseminated.
In addition, with respect to the improper disclosure claim, the Court determined that of the 8,185 class members who complained about defects in certain mailings sent to them by TransUnion, only the lead plaintiff had demonstrated that the formatting errors caused him concrete harm. Therefore, he was the only member who could move forward with the claims. The Court reasoned there was no evidence in the record that any other class member suffered any concrete harm from receiving information in separate envelopes.
The Court's decision in this case reinforces its holding in Spokeo and continues to assert that standing is required for violations of federal law. The Court chose not to address the typicality standard for class actions.
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| Impact(s): FCRA compliance - for general legal review |
| Summary: The Iowa Supreme Court partially upheld the district court's decision as to whether the City of Waterloo's "ban the box" ordinance was preempted by state law. The court determined that the provision prohibiting employers from making inquiries into an applicant's criminal history until a conditional offer of employment has been extended was valid. Such regulation was not subject to preemption.
The Iowa Supreme Court separately invalidated the part of the ordinance that restricted an employer from making an "adverse hiring decision" based exclusively on an individual's criminal record. The court reasoned that preemption applied to this portion because the terms impacted terms or conditions of employment.
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| Impact(s): Iowa employers |
