Hernandez v. Williams, Zinman & Parham PC, No. 14-15672 (9th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CasePlaintiff filed a putative class action, alleging that WZP violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), 15 U.S.C. 1692(g)(a), by sending a debt collection letter that lacked the disclosures required by section 1692(g)(a) of the FDCPA. Applying well-established tools of statutory interpretation and construing the language in section 1692g(a) in light of the context and purpose of the FDCPA, the court held that the phrase “the initial communication” refers to the first communication sent by any debt collector, including collectors that contact the debtor after another collector already did. The court held that the FDCPA unambiguously requires any debt collector - first or subsequent - to send a section 1692g(a) validation notice within five days of its first communication with a consumer in connection with the collection of any debt. In this case, the district court erred in concluding that, because WZP was not the first debt collector to communicate with plaintiff about her debt, it had no obligation to comply with the statutory validation notice requirement. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded.
Court Description: Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. The panel reversed the district court’s summary judgment in favor of the defendant in an action under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. The Act requires that within five days of “the initial communication” with a consumer about the collection of a debt, a debt collector must send the consumer a notice containing specific disclosures. The panel held that this requirement, set forth in 15 U.S.C. § 1692g(a), does not apply only to the initial debt collector that tries to collect, but also applies to subsequent collectors that communicate about the same debt.
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