Williams v. LVNV Funding LLC

Background

Dean Williams, representing himself, sued LVNV Funding LLC, Messerli & Kramer P.A., and Stenger & Stenger, P.C. He asserted claims under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and the Minnesota Consumer Fraud Act (MCFA).

Williams had two Credit One Bank debts, one for $810.69 and another for $1,286.49. According to the defendants, LVNV purchased the debts and engaged Messerli and Stenger to collect them. Messerli and Stenger filed statements of claim against Williams in Minnesota conciliation court. Williams did not appear in person to contest the $810.69 debt, and that court entered a default judgment. LVNV later voluntarily dismissed its claim concerning the $1,286.49 debt.

Williams alleged that the defendants violated federal and state law by failing to attach evidence showing that LVNV had been assigned the debts. The defendants moved to dismiss the entire complaint. Williams did not file a response, but he and the defendants appeared at a hearing.

FDCPA Claim

The court analyzed the FDCPA claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which asks whether a complaint states a legally sufficient claim. The court focused on Williams’s allegation under 15 U.S.C. § 1692e(2)(A), which prohibits a debt collector from falsely representing the character, amount, or legal status of a debt. The court found that Williams’s separate claim under § 1692d was conclusory and did not provide factual allegations, so it focused on the § 1692e(2)(A) claim.

The court held that Williams had not alleged facts showing that the defendants made a false representation about the debt. He questioned the adequacy of the proof supporting LVNV’s ownership but did not allege that LVNV’s representation that it owned the debt was false. At the hearing, Williams agreed that he was not alleging that the defendants made false statements. The court therefore held that he could not establish a § 1692e(2)(A) claim based solely on allegedly inadequate evidence of the debt assignment.

The court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss Williams’s FDCPA claim.

MCFA Claim and Supplemental Jurisdiction

Williams also alleged that filing the statements of claim, including attestations that their contents were true and correct under penalty of perjury, violated the MCFA if LVNV could not prove ownership or assignment.

After dismissing the only federal-law claim, the court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining state-law claim. Supplemental jurisdiction is a federal court’s authority to hear a related state-law claim. The court dismissed the MCFA claim without prejudice so that it could be considered, if at all, by Minnesota courts.

Disposition

The court ordered that the defendants’ motion to dismiss was GRANTED. It also ordered that Williams’s complaint was DISMISSED WITHOUT PREJUDICE. The opinion states that the defendants did not seek dismissal based on allegedly improper service, so the court did not address that issue.