In Huber v. Simons Agency Inc., No. 22-2483 (3d Cir. Oct. 12, 2023), each judge on the panel arrived at a different outcome about whether a plaintiff under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”), 15 U.S.C. §§ 1692– 1692p, suffered an Article III injury because of receiving a debt-collection letter that arguably overstated their debt.
“In 2018, [plaintiff] Huber visited doctors in the Crozer Health Network (Crozer) on four separate occasions. As a result, she incurred the following debts to Crozer: $178 on February 9, $78 on February 22, $83.50 on March 27, and $178 on May 22. Crozer contracted with SAI [defendant Simons Agency Inc.]—a debt collection agency that specializes in medical billing—to collect outstanding bills from Huber and other patients. Whenever Crozer placed a debt with SAI, SAI sent a form collection letter to the debtor.”
The form letter used by SAI included an “Account Summary” that stated in separate columns both the debt sought to be collected (“Amount”), which in Huber’s case was $178, and a “Various Other Accounts Total Balance,” a tally of all debts to the creditor, listed at $517.50. “According to her deposition testimony, Huber was confused after reading the letter as to how much she owed in total . . . . Uncertain which amount was due, she paid neither. Instead, she sent the letter to a financial advisor she had retained to help her ‘take care of [her] financial situation.’”
Huber later filed a putative class action alleging that the practice of printing both numbers on the form letter constituted a “false, deceptive, or misleading” means of collecting a debt in violation of the FDCPA. The district court held that the plaintiff suffered a cognizable “information injury” sufficient to support Article III standing. On cross-motions for summary judgment, “the District Court ruled that SAI’s form letter was . . . deceptive and therefore violated § 1692e as a matter of law.” The district court also certified a Rule 23(b)(3) class of consumers who received the same letter and awarded class damages.
On appeal, the panel majority holds that while the plaintiff had Article III standing, it is based on the specific loss incurred by Huber – having to pay a financial advisor – and that such standing does not extend to the other unnamed class members not identically injured. The panel majority thus vacates the class certification and remands for reconsideration of the scope of the class.
The panel majority rejects the informational injury standing found by the district court. The panel majority notes under circuit authority that “entitlement to the information allegedly withheld is the sine qua non of the informational injury doctrine.” And the panel majority holds that Huber failed to allege denial of such information. Indeed, she was informed of the true amount of her debt, if confusingly so.
“Because she cannot identify a failure to disclose, Huber urges us instead to extend the informational injury doctrine to the failure to disclose clearly and effectively . . . . [But] unclear disclosures do not equate to outright omissions. Opening the courthouse doors whenever required disclosures could arguably be clearer would vitiate the concrete injury requirement in almost any case involving information . . . . Because Huber has not alleged that SAI omitted information to which she was entitled, she did not suffer an informational injury.”
Despite rejecting the district court’s standing analysis, the panel majority affirms standing on the alternative theory that the plaintiff relied to her detriment on a fraudulent misrepresentation. “Like fraudulent misrepresentation, a § 1692e violation involves deception, and the statutory prohibition on the use of ‘any false, deceptive, or misleading representation or means in connection with the collection of any debt,’ 15 U.S.C. § 1692e, ‘protect[s] essentially the same interests” as that ‘traditional cause[] of action . . . .’” Although “confusion, without more, is not a concrete injury” for Article III purposes, plaintiff “did not merely suffer from confusion, but from two resulting ‘financial consequences’: one in consulting with her financial advisor, which the District Court found was ‘at her own additional cost,’ and the other in her failure to ‘pay down her debts or otherwise take appropriate action’ beyond that consultation.”
Finding Article III standing, the panel majority affirms summary judgment on the merits of the FDCPA for plaintiff but dissolves the class (and the monetary judgment in their favor) as, according to the panel majority, it was not shown that other class members incurred a comparable, concrete injury.
Concurring in the result, Judge Bibas (in a footnote to the majority opinion) “would not read the record and statements at oral argument as enough to show detrimental reliance. He does not read the record as showing that Huber paid an incremental cost to have her financial advisor help her with this letter. Thus, he would find no standing. But because both of his colleagues find standing here, he joins the rest of the opinion of the Court.”
Dissenting in part, Judge Rendell would hold that deliver of the misleading communication to Huber was enough to support Article III standing by itself, for both plaintiff and the class, without the additional proof of detrimental reliance, which the FDCPA itself does not require. “By adding a requirement of consequences resulting from reliance, the Majority drastically limits the remedy Congress provided, undermining Congressional policy and the separation of powers . . . . [T]his is a matter for the democratic process.”
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