7th Circuit affirms dismissal of FCRA claims against subservicer

Courts Appellate Seventh Circuit FCRA Consumer Finance Credit Furnishing Mortgages Credit Reporting Agency Credit Report

On July 5, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed summary judgment in favor of a defendant data furnisher in an FCRA case, holding that the plaintiff failed to establish that the defendant provided “patently incorrect or materially misleading information” to a credit reporting agency (CRA). Defendant was the subservicer for plaintiff’s mortgage and was responsible for accepting and tracking payments and providing payment data to the CRAs. After plaintiff failed to make her monthly payments, she resolved the delinquency through a short sale of her home. Several years later, plaintiff noticed that the closed mortgage account appeared on her credit reports as delinquent. She disputed the information to several CRAs. To confirm the accuracy of its records on plaintiff’s mortgage, one of the CRAs sent the defendant data furnisher four automated consumer dispute verification (ACDV) forms. In the ACDV responses, the defendant amended or verified several contested data points, including the pay rate and account history. The CRA reported this amended data to indicate on plaintiff’s credit report that she was currently delinquent on the mortgage with missed payments in the months following the short sale. After plaintiff applied for and was denied a new mortgage based on the credit report, plaintiff sued the defendant data furnisher for alleged violations of the FCRA, alleging that the defendant failed to conduct a reasonable investigation of the disputed data and provided false and misleading information to CRAs. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendant, finding that plaintiff failed to make a threshold showing that the defendant’s data was incomplete or inaccurate.

On appeal, the 7th Circuit disagreed with plaintiff that “completeness or accuracy” under the FCRA “must be judged based, not on the ACDV response the data furnisher provided, but on the credit report generated from it.” The court reasoned that the text of the statute “says nothing about a credit report, let alone a duty of a data furnisher with respect to credit reports produced using its amended data. To the contrary, the statute sets out the data furnisher’s duties to investigate disputes, correct incomplete or inaccurate information, and report results from an investigation” to the CRA. Holding that “context can play a large role in determining completeness or accuracy” in this situation, the appellate court agreed with the district court that the data provided by the defendant to the CRA was “not materially misleading” and that “no reasonable jury could find” that the data meant that plaintiff was currently delinquent on her debt, particularly because of strong “contextual evidence”—specifically, that the disputed data appeared directly beside a status code showing that the account was closed. The appeals court affirmed summary judgment for the data furnisher.