Shelly Milgram’s employee opened, in Milgram’s name, a credit card with Chase and ran up tens of thousands of dollars in debt–then illegally accessed Milgram’s bank accounts and used them to partially pay off the monthly statements. When the scheme was discovered (with the employee later convicted of fraud), Milgram reported the fraud to Chase as unauthorized charges. Chase investigated, and disagreed, concluding that consistent payment of the debts from Milgram’s accounts evidenced apparent authority. Milgram then sued Chase under the Fair Credit Reporting Act for not conducting a reasonable investigation into her dispute.
The district court dismissed her claim, and the Eleventh Circuit affirmed, finding that while “the Fair Credit Reporting Act has some important applications,” ” its cause of action isn’t a great fit for the dispute here.” While Milgram disagreed with Chase’s conclusion, there was nothing she suggested about the investigation that was unreasonable, or that a further investigation would change.
