District Court rules cardholder agreement transferred arbitration rights to third party

Courts Debt Collection State Issues Arbitration FDCPA

On September 10, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas granted a motion to compel arbitration in a putative class action alleging violations of the Arkansas Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (AFDCPA) and the FDCPA. According to the order, the plaintiffs contended that the defendants—a debt buyer and its law firm—attempted to collect charged-off credit card debts “through standardized, form debt collection complaints . . . that fraudulently and falsely averred that [the debt buyer] ‘holds in due course a claim . . . pursuant to a defaulted [bank] credit card account.” While the plaintiffs did not dispute that the arbitration provision contained within the cardholder agreement entered into with the bank was valid and that their state and federal claims fell within its scope, they argued that the debt buyer was not a “holder in due course” of the accounts in questions, and as such, the arbitration provision contained within the cardholder agreement was not assigned to the defendants. The court disagreed, ruling that the cardholder agreements specifically permitted the original creditors to assign their rights to a third party, which includes the right to arbitration and the right to enforce the class action prohibition.