Duncan v. Asset Recovery Specialists, Inc., No. 17-2598 (7th Cir. 2018)
Annotate this CaseDuncan fell behind on her car payments, ARS repossessed the vehicle on behalf of the lender, Wells Fargo. Duncan had left some personal items in the car, and when she sought to retrieve them, ARS allegedly demanded $100. The Seventh Circuit affirmed the summary judgment rejection of her suit under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. 1692f. The $100 charge was not a demand for loan repayment by Duncan, but rather an administrative property-retrieval fee that Wells Fargo had agreed to pay, Duncan was not able to back her allegation that ARS demanded the $100 fee of her with anything beyond her own testimony. ARS backed its contrary testimony with the Receipt for Redeeming Personal Property, which expressly established that Wells Fargo—not Duncan—would make the $100 payment. The same documentary evidence shows that the $100 handling fee was just an administrative expense, not a masked demand for a principal payment to Wells Fargo.
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