Silber v. TransUnion, LLC

Background

Chaim Silber sued TransUnion, LLC, Equifax Information Services, LLC, Experian Information Solutions, Inc., and Ford Motor Credit Company, LLC under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. He alleged that the three consumer-reporting agencies violated provisions requiring accurate reporting and reasonable reinvestigation of disputed information. He alleged that Ford Credit violated the provision governing companies that furnish information to consumer-reporting agencies by failing to investigate and correct inaccurate reporting.

Silber leased a vehicle and used automatic payments during the original lease term. After extending the lease, he alleged that he was not told that the automatic-payment arrangement would not continue. He expected the payments to continue, missed payments, and later paid the amount needed to bring the account current. Ford Credit reported the missed payments to the consumer-reporting agencies. After Silber disputed the information, he alleged that the agencies and Ford Credit failed to timely or reasonably investigate and continued reporting inaccurate adverse information.

Motions and Legal Standard

The consumer-reporting agencies and Ford Credit each moved for judgment on the pleadings under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(c). The court applied the same standard used for a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim: the complaint had to contain enough factual matter to make entitlement to relief plausible. The court accepted well-pleaded factual allegations as true and drew reasonable inferences in Silber’s favor, but it did not accept legal conclusions or conclusory statements without supporting facts.

Claims Against the Consumer-Reporting Agencies

The court held that Silber failed to allege that the agencies’ reports were inaccurate or materially misleading. The court explained that an FCRA claim based on accuracy or reinvestigation requires an alleged inaccuracy. Information is inaccurate when it is plainly wrong or misleading in a way likely to affect credit decisions. The court also applied the standard that disputed information must be objectively and readily verifiable.

The court found that the missed payments were objectively verifiable because Silber acknowledged that he missed them. The court rejected Silber’s argument that the reports were inaccurate because the missed payments resulted from his mistaken expectation that automatic payments would continue. The agencies reported that payments were missed; they did not represent that Silber had missed payments for some different reason or otherwise misstate the payment history. The court therefore concluded that the reports were factually accurate and not materially misleading, and dismissed Silber’s claims against TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian without prejudice.

Claims Against Ford Credit

The court also dismissed Silber’s claims against Ford Credit without prejudice. For a claim under the FCRA provision governing furnishers of information, a consumer must show that the furnisher received notice of a dispute from a consumer-reporting agency and negligently or willfully failed to conduct a reasonable investigation. The parties did not dispute that Silber satisfied the notice requirement.

The court found, however, that Silber offered only conclusory allegations that a reasonable investigation would have shown the missed payments resulted from Ford Credit’s handling of the account. Those allegations did not adequately show that Ford Credit’s investigation was deficient. The court further stated that a successful claim requires proof that the reported information was actually inaccurate. It concluded that Silber had not sufficiently pleaded either an inaccurate account or a failure to conduct a reasonable investigation. The court also noted that the lease-extension agreement addressed when automatic payments would apply to an extended lease and that the FCRA did not require Ford Credit to delete the disputed account merely because it received a dispute.

Disposition

Judge Nelson S. Roman granted both motions for judgment on the pleadings in their entirety without prejudice. The court granted Silber leave to file a First Amended Complaint by March 26, 2025. The amended complaint would replace, rather than supplement, the original complaint. If Silber did not file it by the deadline, the claims dismissed without prejudice would be deemed dismissed with prejudice and the case would be terminated. The court directed the defendants to answer or otherwise respond by April 16, 2025 if Silber filed an amended complaint, and directed the parties to confer and submit a case-management plan and scheduling order by May 7, 2025.