FCRA Class Action Review – 2025

found that the plaintiff failed to meet the typicality and adequacy requirements, as her claims were filed after the statute of limitations, and the plaintiff was representing her late husband, and therefore could not testify about when her husband first discovered the error in his credit report. The court thus determined that the plaintiff could not be an adequate class representative and that her claims were not typical to those of the class. Accordingly, the court denied the plaintiff’s motion for class certification. In another case of note, Carr, et al. v. Regulatory Datacorp, Inc . et al. , 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 152357 (E.D. Penn. Aug. 26, 2024), the plaintiff similarly filed a class action lawsuit against the defendants alleging violations of the FCRA. Specifically, the plaintiff in this case alleged that the defendants violated § 1681e(c) by providing Capital One, one of defendants’ customers, with a purported consumer report detailing his criminal trafficking infractions, which led to the wrongful closure of his account, and then prevented Capital One from disclosing the contents of the report. The plaintiff filed a motion for class certification, seeking to certify a class of individuals whose Capital One accounts were closed based on reports provided by the defendants, and who were allegedly denied access to the contents of those reports. The plaintiff specifically asserted that Capital One queried information about the plaintiff using the defendants’ reporting system. The query returned a report containing an article about the plaintiff’s son, Jeffrey Nigel Carr, Jr., who had been convicted of trafficking offenses. Capital One mistakenly believed the report referred to Jeffrey N. Carr, Sr., and closed his account. Despite the plaintiff’s protests, Capital One did not disclose the report provided by defendants or its contents, nor did they reveal the source of the information used to close the account. The plaintiff alleged that the defendants’ actions violated § 1681e(c) of the FCRA. The court, however, found that the plaintiff’s class failed to meet the requirements under Rule 23. Although the plaintiff contended that there were over 19,000 individuals affected by the same issue, the court opined that he failed provided enough evidence to show that these account closures were specifically tied to the defendants’ reports or that they were associated with natural persons within the United States. Additionally, the evidence did not establish how many closures were due to the defendants’ reports specifically, as some were based on other sources. Therefore, the court found that the plaintiff failed to meet the numerosity requirement for class certification. The court also determined that the plaintiff failed to meet the ascertainability requirement, because the plaintiff’s evidence showed that Capital One would be unable to identify which account closures were based on the defendants’ reports alone and would need to manually review thousands of records to determine the source of each closure. For these reasons, the court denied the plaintiff’s motion for class certification. VI. Key FCRA Circuit Court Rulings Remanding Or Otherwise Mandating Reconsideration Of Prior Certification Decisions The plaintiffs filed a class action in Santos, et al. v. Healthcare Revenue Recovery Group, LLC., 90 F.4th 1144 (11th Cir. 2024), alleging that the defendant failed to provide accurate credit reports in violation of the FCRA. The district court denied the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification. The district court concluded that under 15 U.S.C. § 1681n(a)(1)(A), consumers seeking statutory damages for willful violations of the FCRA need to prove actual damages. The plaintiffs had alleged that the defendant had erroneously reported inaccurate status dates on credit reports, affecting over 2.1 million consumers. The key legal question was the interpretation of the second option in § 1681n(a)(1)(A), which allows consumers to recover “damages of not less than $100 and not more than $1,000” for willful violations (compared to the first option where penalties of up to $2,500 can result given the extent of actual damages at issue). Id. at 1148. The defendant argued that consumers must prove actual damages to recover under this provision, while the plaintiffs contended that statutory damages could be recovered without proving actual damages. On the plaintiffs’ appeal, the Eleventh Circuit, after a panel rehearing, vacated its prior opinion and clarified that under § 1681n(a)(1)(A), consumers can seek statutory damages without proving actual damages. The Eleventh Circuit reasoned that the language of the statute itself distinguishes between “actual damages” required under the first option of the provision and “damages” available under the second option. Unlike the first option, the second option does not expressly mandate proof of actual damages, therefore evidencing Congress’ intention to provide a minimum statutory recovery for willful violations of the FCRA. The Eleventh Circuit also noted that its interpretation aligns with decisions of other federal circuits and is consistent with the legislative purpose of the FCRA to protect consumer rights against inaccurate credit reporting. Additionally, the Eleventh Circuit held that the district court’s denial of class certification was based on an incorrect interpretation of the damages provision. As a result, the Eleventh Circuit ruled that the denial of class certification was an abuse of discretion and remanded the case for further proceedings consistent with its

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