The Seventh Circuit issued a decision in Milam v. Selene Finance today, an FDCPA case where the Court punted on the merits but addressed standing in a manner that may be notable for practitioners. Ramona Milam sued Selene Finance, the servicer of her home mortgage, after Selene sent her a letter threatening acceleration and foreclosure if […]
Category Archives: Debt Collection
Alexa Rosenbloom of Harvard has written The Pervasive and Troubling use of Coverage Attorneys in Assembly-Line Litigation, 33 Geo. J. on Poverty L. & Pol’y (2026) (forthcoming). Here’s the abstract: Debt collection cases dominate state court civil dockets in Massachusetts and across the country. Extant scholarship regarding debt collection in the courts has focused on […]
From the Third Circuit’s opinion today: J.P. Ward & Associates is a debt-defense law firm that handles many [FDCPA] §1692e(8) claims. To “scal[e]” up its practice and get more fees, named partner Joshua Ward and lawyer Travis Gordon hatched a scheme. If a client approached the firm to dispute a debt, the firm would get […]
Yesterday, the Second Circuit decided Upsolve v. James, an appeal that had different advocates for low-income consumers taking opposing positions. The case was brought by Upsolve, a nonprofit that seeks to provide free legal advice to New Yorkers facing debt-collection actions in state court via a cadre of specially trained, non-lawyer “Justice Advocates.” The problem is […]
At the end of February, the Ninth Circuit issued its decision in Six v. IQ Data International, where it reversed a district court’s dismissal of an FDCPA claim for lack of standing. The plaintiff’s claim was based on a violation of 15 U.S.C. § 1692c(a)(2), which prohibits a debt collector from directly communicating with a […]
We received the following: HOUSTON – Multiple directly impacted people and groups have asked for permission in federal court to defend the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB’s) important recent rule to remove medical debt from credit reports. The National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) is representing Texas truck driver David Deeds and District of Columbia resident […]
As the federal government as we know it is eliminated, it is good to see a positive pro-consumer opinion out of the Eleventh Circuit today. In Booze v. Ocwen Loan Servicing, the Court of Appeals considered a question that had divided district courts–whether the FDCPA prohibits loan servicers from collecting “pay-to-pay” or “convenience” fees for the […]
Here, authored by Seth Frotman and Lorelei Salas. Here is a particularly intriguing excerpt: Now that companies are being held accountable for charging [certain] unlawful fees, they have switched to new, underhanded tactics to try to continue to extract junk fee revenue from people. For example, we have seen some debt collectors unlawfully amend consumers’ […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission this week issued their annual reporting of their debt collection activities. The CFPB, required under the Consumer Financial Protection Act to report to Congress annually on its activities to administer the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, recounted its ongoing work on medical debt. Notably, in […]
A home equity line of credit, or “HELOC,” is a loan product that allows a consumer to borrow money, using their equity in their home as collateral. William Lyons had taken out a HELOC from a predecessor to PNC Bank. Years later, PNC withdrew money from Lyons’ deposit account to offset outstanding payments on the […]