9th Circuit holds that judicial foreclosure proceedings to collect unpaid HOA fees is debt collection under FDCPA

Courts Appellate Ninth Circuit Debt Collection Foreclosure FDCPA

On June 25, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit held that judicial foreclosure proceedings to collect delinquent assessments and other charges that were owed to a homeowners association (HOA) represented by a law firm that was also a defendant in the case constitute “debt collection” under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). The decision results from unpaid assessments owed to the HOA that had previously been settled in two prior suits. However, the homeowner (plaintiff-appellant) defaulted on both settlement agreements, and foreclosure proceedings commenced due to an acknowledgment contained within the second agreement, which recognized the HOA’s right to collect the debt by foreclosing on and selling her property. According to the order, the 9th Circuit first drew a distinction between judicial foreclosures and nonjudicial foreclosures. Nonjudicial foreclosures, the 9th Circuit opined, are not debt collections under the FDCPA because, under California law, they present no possibility of a deficiency judgment against the homeowner and recover nothing from the homeowner. However, the Court held that in this case, the judicial foreclosure created the possibility for a deficiency judgment against the homeowner and subsequent collection of money. Furthermore, since the law firm regularly collected debts owed to others, it was a debt collector, and the lower court’s contrary decision “cannot be reconciled with the language of the FDCPA.” The 9th Circuit reversed the lower court’s ruling that the defendants were not engaged in “debt collection” as defined by the FDCPA.

However, because the lower court granted summary judgment to the defendants, it did not assess whether the plaintiff-appellant had suffered any damages from her claim that the defendants “misrepresented the amount of her debt and sought attorneys’ fees to which they were not entitled” during judicial proceedings. The 9th Circuit held that the law firm’s application for a writ of special execution included “accruing attorney fees,” implying that the fees had been approved by a court, as required by state law, when they had not. The 9th Circuit noted that the state trial court’s subsequent approval of the fee request did not mean the representation was accurate when it was made. The 9th Circuit remanded to allow the lower court to determine what damages, if any, were due the homeowner due to this violation.

In a separate memorandum disposition, the 9th Circuit, however, affirmed in part the lower court’s order granting the defendants’ motion for summary judgment concerning the plaintiff-appellant’s time-barred claims, holding that “even the ‘least sophisticated debtor’ would not likely be misled by the communication—and lack of communication—at issue here, as Plaintiff cannot have reasonably believed that she had paid off the debt in question.”