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A recent case from a Wisconsin district court serves as a
reminder that the best approach to a 1692g notice is that it stands alone. In Maniaci
v. The Receivable Management Services Corp., 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 109087
(E.D. Wisc. June 29, 2018), the agency’s 1692g notice included a statement that
If you have not yet been contacted by an RMS representative, you will be receiving a call to bring this matter to a resolution. Should you receive this letter after a discussion with our representative, we thank you for your cooperation.
Maniaci at
*2.
In determining the collection agency’s motion to dismiss, the
court considered whether the above statement overshadowed the 1692g notice,
leading the unsophisticated consumer to believe he could wait until he received
a call to dispute the debt.
The agency contended that the statement did not overshadow
the remainder of the notice because it “clearly and unequivocally directs the
consumer to provide the dispute in writing.”
Id. at * 5. The court, however, disagreed. In doing so, the court made two points. First, the court concluded that a statement
that the debt collector would be calling might lead the unsophisticated
consumer to conclude that he would be receiving the call within the thirty-day
debt validation window, at which time he could “bring this matter to a
resolution” by disputing the debt. Second,
the court found the debt collector’s contention that it did not make calls
within the thirty-day validation troubling because it presented the possibility
that consumers would forfeit their rights under §1692g.
Despite denying the motion to dismiss, however, the court
was quick to point out that the threshold for motions to dismiss is high
because “dismissal is only appropriate in cases involving statements that
plainly, on their face, are not misleading or deceptive.”
The key take away from this, of course, is that 1692g
notices are best when they contain no extraneous language which might obscure
the notice.
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