In Marquez v. Weinstein, Pinson & Riley, P.S., 2016 WL 4651403, at *4 (7th Cir. 2016), the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit found a debt collection law firm’s complaint deceptive.
Paragraph 12 is misleading to the unsophisticated consumer both as to the proper timing to respond to the complaint and as to the manner of response. A plain reading of the summons and the complaint would cause a consumer to believe that he had until the date in the summons to file an answer and contest the claim, but that beyond the 30-day period in paragraph 12 he could no longer contest the validity or correctness of the debt. Because the 30-day period would expire before the date that the answer had to be filed for each of the litigants, those provisions in conjunction would lead an unsophisticated consumer to believe that he had that 30-day period to dispute the debt and beyond that period he could not dispute that debt in his answer. For each plaintiff in this FDCPA action, the time period for “disputing the debt” was shorter than the time period provided by law for the answer. For instance, for one plaintiff in this FDCPA action, the complaint provided that the debt must be disputed by December 14 while the answer was not due, according to the summons, until December 23. Paragraph 12 thus effectively shortened the time period provided in the summons for the consumer to answer, because the consumer had been told in paragraph 12 that he only had the 30-day period to dispute the validity or correctness of the debt. That would cause an unsophisticated consumer to believe that beyond that time period in Paragraph 12 for disputing the debt, even if filing an answer, the validity of the debt could no longer be disputed in that answer. The language used in Paragraph 12 is particularly pernicious in that regard. The language regarding the 30-day dispute period was not merely lifted from the demand letter, which provided that unless the debt was disputed within that 30-day period, “