05/03/2006
Do you find the name "Credit Protection Association" (CPA) threatening? Whether or not you do can depend upon your perspective. Here's the case of one who saw a threat in the name and brought his concerns to a district court and then an appellate court.
John Dunlap, it seems, allegedly owed Blockbuster Video $12.90. Blockbuster referred the debt to CPA, a collection agency, who sent Dunlap a dunning letter. The letter, on letterhead with "Credit Protection Association" in large, capital letters, informed Dunlap of the debt and that CPA was a collection company attempting to collect it, and of his right to dispute it.
Dunlap saw the company name, read the body of the letter, (later described by the court as "straightforward and nonthreatening,") and inferred that he would have to make a payment in order to protect his credit rating. He reacted by filing a class action lawsuit, alleging that CPA had violated sections of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act prohibiting a debt collector from using "any false, deceptive, or misleading representation or means in connection with the collection of any debt" and that CPA's letter violated the Act's prohibition against false representation of "the character, amount, or legal status of any debt" (a claim he never explained or supported) and the prohibition against "[t]he threat to take any action that cannot legally be taken or that is not intended to be taken."
Affirming the district court's decision, the appellate court decided that even the least sophisticated debtor would not be misled into believing that his credit would be damaged by failing to pay a trifling debt and that any inference drawn from CPA's name was weak at best and not sustained by the letter's text.
Our opinion? First, we get a glimmer of how Dunlap could perceive a threat, however slight, in CPA's name. "Credit Protection . . ." implies the power to protect someone's credit through the means expressed in the text of the letter. Whose? Certainly neither that of Blockbuster nor the defendant itself, whose credit ratings were not at risk anyway, and who were not the letter's addressees. So how about Dunlap, the recipient of the letter and the only character remaining in this cast?
At the same time, it's anyone's guess why Blockbuster referred a debt so trifling to a collection agency, and why any collection agency would put forth any effort to collect it for what they would get out of it.
Mr. Dunlap's actions in first filing suit and then appealing the trial court's decision were certainly not to collect damages (how much damage can you suffer from a $12.90 debt you haven't even paid anyway?) plus a penalty of between $100 and $1,000. Perhaps he felt that by filing a class action, he was upholding some lofty principle for all the members of the class, who probably stood to gain something as insignificant as a free movie rental if they prevailed. And perhaps he was motivated by the likelihood of a little more compensation for himself as the class representative if he prevailed.
Since he didn't prevail, though, his debt has likely grown to include attorney fees and court costs of many times amount of the debt.
We hope he enjoyed the movie.
|