District Court (N.J.) Follows Third Circuit’s Decision in Douglass’ Glassine Window Case

In Park v. ARS National Services, Inc., 2015 WL 6579686, at *5 (D.N.J., 2015), Judge Wigenton followed the Third Circuit’s Douglass decision.

Defendant’s argument that the FDCPA does not apply to the barcode at issue because other laws and regulations prohibit third parties from scanning it is unpersuasive. Neither the text nor the underlying purposes of the FDCPA provide any basis for such an exception. See 15 U.S.C. § 1692f. The FDCPA’s broad language focuses on debt collectors’ actions that could harm consumers and on protecting consumers’ personal information. See, e.g, 15 U.S.C. § 1692f (“A debt collector may not use unfair or unconscionable means to collect or attempt to collect any debt.”); Douglass, 765 F.3d at 303 (“Section 1692f evinces Congress’s intent to screen from public view information pertinent to the debt collection.” (citations omitted)). Section 1692(b) also shows Congress’ intent to broadly regulate debt collector behavior through the FDCPA despite the existence of related laws: “[e]xisting laws and procedures for redressing [injuries to consumers from abusive debt collection practices] are inadequate to protect consumers.” This purpose of the FDCPA is further supported by the Third Circuit’s focus in Douglass on the potential harm the debt collector’s public disclosure of the plaintiff’s account number could cause (i.e., an invasion of the plaintiff’s privacy) rather than on whether a third party would violate the law in accessing or using that information. See Douglass, 765 F.3d at 305–06; Slyer, 2015 WL 4394032, at *8 (noting that the Douglass opinion’s focus on the debt collector’s public disclosure “allows for the inference that the potential of a third party using, possessing, or transferring plaintiff’s account number, was, at best, an insufficient reason to find that the disclosure of an account number was not a violation of the FDCPA”). Thus, the remedial purposes and broad language of the FDCPA do not provide for exceptions to its prohibitions based on legislation that may forbid related behavior by third parties.  In light of the Court’s analysis of the FDCPA and the Third Circuit’s Douglass opinion, the Defendant has not established that Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint states a claim under the FDCPA that is facially plausible and, therefore, Defendant’s Amended Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings must be denied.