District Court (Cal.) Finds No Inaccuracy Pleaded in FCRA Claim Merely By Saying “Not Mine”

In Iyigun v. Cavalry Portfolio Services, LLC, 2013 WL 950947 (C.D.Cal. 2013), Judge Fitzgerald found that Plaintiff stated no FCRA claim because her claim that she did not owe the money did not demonstrate an inaccuracy in her report.

First, Iyigun’s claims for violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) and the California Consumer Credit Reporting Agencies Act (“CCRAA”) fail because the SAC does not sufficiently plead the element of inaccurate credit reporting. See Carvalho v. Equifax Information Services, LLC, 629 F.3d 876, 890 (9th Cir.2010) (“Although the FCRA’s reinvestigation provision … does not on its face require that an actual inaccuracy exist for a plaintiff to state a claim, many courts, including our own, have imposed such a requirement.”). As the Court previously explained, the plain allegation that “the accounts do not belong to” Iyigun does not provide Cavalry with sufficient notice as to the claims against it because it does not sufficiently identify the inaccuracies of the alleged reporting. See Manukyan v. Cach, LLC, 2012 WL 6199938, at *3 (C.D.Cal. Dec. 11, 2012) (concluding that similar claim failed to sufficiently plead inaccurate reporting under the FCRA and the CCRAA). The SAC does not dispute that Iyigun owed money on the Bank of America account about which Cavalry reported, nor does it identify any inaccuracies Cavalry wrongfully reported. That Iyigun was unaware of Cavalry and argues she owed no debt to Cavalry does not mean that Iyigun’s debt to Bank of America is alleged to be inaccurate.  At the hearing, counsel for Iyigun cited Petrosyan v. CACH, LLC, et al., Case No. 12–cv–08683–GW (C.D.Cal.2013) for the proposition that a dispute about the existence of an account can constitute a dispute under the FCRA and the CCRAA. But Iyigun does not dispute the existence of the account; she disputes that Cavalry had the authority to collect on the account. Iyigun’s argument is that Cavalry must come forward with evidence of its authority to collect the debt. Cavalry’s purported lack of authority, even if true, would not establish the claims alleged in the SAC, nor do the FCRA or CCRA require that Cavalry prove the assignment at this time. A casual observer of the hearing would have thought that Iyigun was the defendant and Cavalry the plaintiff in an action to collect the debt.