Ewing v. Med 1 Solutions, LLC

Dist. Ct. did not err in granting defendant-debt collector’s motion for summary judgment as to one plaintiff’s claim, alleging that defendant violated Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, where defendant failed to report plaintiff’s dispute over debt to credit reporting agency. While plaintiff had standing to bring such claim, where plaintiff suffered intangible, reputation injury that was sufficiently concrete for purposes of Article III standing, Dist. Ct. could properly find that defendant was entitled to bona fide error affirmative defense, where error was caused by clerk sending plaintiff’s dispute letter to wrong department (which prevented dispute letter being sent to credit reporting agency), and where defendant otherwise had procedures to avoid such mistake. Dist. Ct. erred, though, in granting second defendant’s motion for summary judgment raising bona fide error affirmative defense, where record showed that: (1) failure to report plaintiff’s dispute to credit reporting agency was caused by defendant’s failure to check fax inbox for said dispute; (2) plaintiff sent fax containing dispute to fax number provided by defendant; and (3) defendant failed to inform public that it stopped checking fax inbox, yet sent plaintiff confirmation that it had received plaintiff’s fax.