Justia Consumer Law Opinion Summaries

The debtor did not pay his $2,902 bill for treatment of an infection, which was turned over to a collections agency. He made payments for several years. When the balance was at $536.35 the agency sued in Michigan court for $678.27, attaching to the complaint a document titled "Combined Affidavit of Open Account and Motion for Default Judgment." An agency employee then incorrectly told the debtor that he owned $1,016. The district court rejected the debtor's suit under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act 15 U.S.C. § 1692e. The Sixth Circuit reversed in part, holding that the title to the document attached to the complaint could be misleading. The mistaken balance was not given as part of a collection effort and was not a violation of the Act.

Plaintiffs filed suit under the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (DPPA), 18 U.S.C. 2721-2725, and 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that personal information, as defined by the DPPA, was disclosed by individual defendants while acting as agents of the Ohio Department of Public Safety or the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV). The BMV apparently made bulk disclosures of personal information from motor vehicle records to a company, for an asserted permissible purpose, and the company resold or redisclosed the information. The district court determined that the defendants were not entitled to qualified immunity. On interlocutory appeal. the Sixth Circuit reversed and remanded. The DPPA is not a strict liability statute and the defendants made the disclosures for a purportedly permitted purpose; they did not violate plaintiffs' "clearly established" rights. The DPPA does not impose a duty to investigate requests for disclosure nor does it clearly prohibit bulk disclosures.

The Sixth Circuit previously reversed defendant's conviction and sentence for possession of a firearm in connection with drug trafficking, 18 U.S.C. 924(c), but affirmed other convictions and the 30-year sentence he received for those counts. The government dropped the charge and the court vacated the sentence for that count by written order without allowing defendant to personally appear or re-allocute. peals arguing that the district court erred by not conducting a plenary resentencing. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, holding that because the issue was limited to the 924 charge, which the United States declined to pursue, there was no sentencing to be done. The district court did not rely on the 924 conviction in imposing the sentence for the other counts and it was not improper to consider the actual possession of a gun.

The first plaintiffs alleged that Fidelity failed to provide a discount, required by its filed rates, when issuing title insurance to homeowners who had purchased a title insurance policy for the same property from any other insurer within the previous 10 years. The second plaintiff brought the same claims against First American. The district court denied their motion to certify a class. The Sixth Circuit affirmed. Although the claims involve small amounts, so that the plaintiffs are likely unable to recover except by class action, the plaintiffs did not establish that issues subject to generalized proof and applicable to the whole class predominate over issues subject to individualized proof. The need to establish entitlement to join the class and the need to prove individual damages are not fatal to class certification, but the Ohio insurance rate structure would necessitate individual inquiries on the issue of liability. The plaintiffs phrased their claims in a way that would require examination of individual policies and whether the company received the requisite documentation for the discount.