Stewart v. Equifax Info. Servs., LLC

• Decision Date: 02 March 2018
• Docket Number: Case No. 16–2781–DDC–KGG
• Citation: 320 F.Supp.3d 1186
• Parties: Lucretia STEWART, Plaintiff, v. EQUIFAX INFORMATION SERVICES, LLC, and Credit One Bank, N.A., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Kansas

320 F.Supp.3d 1186

Lucretia STEWART, Plaintiff,

v.EQUIFAX INFORMATION SERVICES, LLC, and Credit One Bank, N.A., Defendants.

Case No. 16–2781–DDC–KGG

United States District Court, D. Kansas.

Signed March 2, 2018

Alan J. Stecklein, Michael H. Rapp, Stecklein & Rapp Chartered, Kansas City, KS, Brian E. Johnson, Washington, DC, Patric A. Lester, Lester and Associates, San Diego, CA, for Plaintiff.

Guillermo Gabriel Zorogastua, Polsinelli PC, Kersten L. Holzhueter, Spencer Fane LLP, Kansas City, MO, Meryl W. Roper, Zachary A. McEntyre, King & Spalding LLP, Atlanta, GA, Joshua C. Dickinson, Spencer Fane LLP, Omaha, NE, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

Daniel D. Crabtree, United States District Judge

Plaintiff Lucretia Stewart brings this lawsuit against defendants Equifax Information Services, LLC ("Equifax") and Credit One Bank, N.A. ("Credit One"), alleging that defendants violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act ("FCRA"), 15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq. All parties have filed motions for summary judgment. Plaintiff has filed Motions for Partial Summary Judgment against defendant Credit One (Doc. 66) and defendant Equifax (Doc. 68). Both motions seek summary judgment in plaintiff's favor on defendants' liability on her FCRA claims. Defendant Equifax has filed a Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. 61), as has defendant Credit One (Doc. 64). Defendants' motions seek summary judgment against plaintiff's FCRA claims.

After considering the parties' arguments, the court concludes that the summary judgment facts, even when viewed in plaintiff's favor, establish no genuine issue whether defendants violated the FCRA. The court thus grants defendants' summary judgment motions and denies plaintiff's motions seeking partial summary judgment.

I. Uncontroverted Facts

The following facts are either stipulated facts taken from the Pretrial Order (Doc. 71), uncontroverted, or, where controverted, stated in the light most favorable to the party opposing summary judgment. Scott v. Harris , 550 U.S. 372, 378, 127 S.Ct. 1769, 167 L.Ed.2d 686 (2007).

The Parties

Defendant Credit One is a national bank engaged in the business of extending consumer credit in the State of Kansas and elsewhere. Credit One also is a furnisher of consumer credit information. Defendant Equifax is a limited liability company and a consumer reporting agency. Equifax is engaged in the business of credit reporting in the State of Kansas.

Equifax's Business, Policies, and Procedures

In its business, Equifax gathers information about consumers from various sources, including banks, collection agencies, and court records. It then uses that information to create credit files for more than 200 million consumers in the United States. Equifax uses those files to prepare consumer reports that its subscribers can purchase and use to evaluate the consumer's potential credit risk as well as other permissible purposes.

Equifax accepts credit information from sources who it has determined are reasonably reliable based upon Equifax's own investigation, the source's reputation in the community, or Equifax's longstanding business relationships with the source. When Equifax receives a request from a company to become a data furnisher, it generally conducts an investigation to ensure that the company is reliable. Equifax typically requires each company to complete a detailed application and sign a subscriber agreement. The subscriber agreement requires the company to certify that it will acquire consumer reports only for permissible purposes under the FCRA and that it otherwise will comply with all FCRA requirements. They include the requirement that the data furnisher investigate consumer disputes. The subscriber agreement also requires data furnishers to supply only accurate, up-to-date information.

After Equifax receives an application, subscriber agreement, and valid business license, Equifax's new-accounts department conducts an investigation of the company. This investigation may include an onsite visit to determine the company's legitimacy and reliability.

Data furnishers provide consumer credit information to Equifax in a standardized electronic format. After receiving this data, Equifax conducts a series of computerized quality checks before it adds that data to its consumer database. These checks are designed to determine whether the data is in the proper format and whether the data as a whole deviates from expected norms (based on past experience with that particular source).

Plaintiff's Ex–Husband Opens a Credit One Account

Plaintiff resides in Kansas. In 2005, plaintiff divorced her husband. Although they had divorced, plaintiff's ex-husband lived with her for some time during 2013, because he recently had been released from jail and was facing financial issues. Around the end of September 2015, plaintiff's ex-husband moved out of plaintiff's home after she asked him to leave.

In January 2016, plaintiff's ex-husband opened a Credit One credit card account ("the Account"). The credit application for this Account states that the applicant is plaintiff's ex-husband, lists an address that is plaintiff's address, and adds plaintiff as an authorized user. The application also provides plaintiff's date of birth and it states that she, as an authorized user, is the applicant's current spouse. Plaintiff testified that she did not know that her ex-husband had applied for the card and identified her as an authorized user.

Plaintiff's ex-husband defaulted on his obligation for the credit card, and the Account became delinquent. Credit One made a report to Equifax that the Account was delinquent, and identified plaintiff as an "authorized user" on the Account. After Credit One made the report to Equifax, the account appeared in the "Adverse Accounts" section of plaintiff's Equifax credit report. It was her only Adverse Account. Also, Equifax's credit file for plaintiff shows her status for the Account as: "Account Owner: Authorized User."

Plaintiff testified that she first learned that she was identified as an authorized user on the Account when she checked her credit score and noticed that it had declined. But plaintiff has produced no documents showing that her credit score ever declined. Instead, the summary judgment record contains several records showing that plaintiff's credit score never declined during the relevant time period. Also, plaintiff agrees that authorized users are not responsible to make payment on balances due.

On June 30, 2016, plaintiff submitted an online dispute about the Account to nonparty Trans Union LLC. In response to plaintiff's online dispute, Trans Union deleted the Account from her Trans Union credit report.

That same day, plaintiff submitted an online dispute of the Account to Equifax. Plaintiff identified the "dispute code" on the "Automated Credit Dispute Verification" ("ACDV") form as "001." The dispute code "001" means "not his account/her account." Doc. 75–1 at 1. The ACDV form offers many different dispute codes for consumers to choose to explain the nature of the dispute. There are separate dispute codes for identity theft (003) and fraud (004).

The exact words that plaintiff used to describe her dispute were transcribed into the FCRA relevant information field on the ACDV form. Plaintiff described her dispute in this fashion:

THIS IS NOT MY ACCOUNT SO I CAN ONLY ASSUME IT WAS OPENED FRAUDULENTLY OR WAS POSTED TO MY BUREAU IN ERROR. I PULLED MY BUREAU AFTER SEEING MY FICO SCORE HAD DROPPED FOR LATE PAYS I SEE FOR FREE ON MY CITIBANK CARD.

Id. Plaintiff submitted no documents to support her dispute. Plaintiff also did not use the phrase "authorized user" in her dispute. Plaintiff never explained to Equifax that her concern was that the Account listed her as an authorized user. And plaintiff never identified her ex-husband as the Account holder who had designated her as an authorized user without her permission.

Equifax's Procedures For Reinvestigating Consumer Disputes

Equifax maintains detailed policies and procedures designed to assure that it conducts reasonable reinvestigations of information that consumers dispute as inaccurate. Equifax has adopted several different, furnisher-specific procedures for authorized users to use when they dispute ownership of an account. Equifax has no furnisher-specific procedure for a report by a Credit One authorized user account who disputes ownership of the account.

Equifax provides three different avenues for a consumer to dispute information contained on an Equifax credit report. Those three avenues are: (1) telephone dispute; (2) written and mailed dispute; and (3) online disputes received through an Internet portal on Equifax's website. When Equifax receives a dispute, it locates the consumer's credit file and opens an Automated Consumer Interview System ("ACIS") case that tracks the reinvestigation's process. Equifax then reviews and considers all relevant information (including documentation, if any, provided by the consumer) and reviews the contents of the consumer's credit file. If further investigation is required, Equifax notifies the source of the account information (the "data furnisher") about the consumer's dispute, identifies the nature of the consumer's dispute, and includes the consumer's account information as it then appears in Equifax's credit file.

When Equifax receives a consumer dispute by phone or mail, a person charged with ensuring that the dispute is accurately categorized and coded reviews the dispute. But when Equifax receives a dispute through its website via its online dispute portal, no one reviews the submission. When a consumer submits a dispute to Equifax through its website via its online dispute portal, the consumer codes the dispute according to the consumer's perception of the alleged inaccuracy. No one at Equifax reviews the coding chosen by consumers to describe disputes when submitted through Equifax's website via its online dispute portal. Instead, an automated process accepts the...