FDCPA and Other Consumer Rights Lawsuit Statistics, December 1-15, 2009

Grand Rapids, MI – The following statistics are provided to the ARM industry courtesy of WebRecon LLC. There were about 503 lawsuits filed under consumer statutes in the first half of December.

Here is an approximate breakdown:

• 425 Fair Debt Collection Practices Act
• 39 Fair Credit Reporting Act
• 21 Truth In Lending Act
• 11 State of California Consumer Statutes
• 9 Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act
• 3 State of Florida Consumer Statutes
• 2 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
• 1 Telephone Consumer Protection Act
• 1 State of Wisconsin Consumer Statutes
• 1 State of West Virginia Consumer Statutes
• 1 State of Washington Consumer Statutes
• 1 State of Utah Consumer Statutes
• 1 State of Texas Consumer Statutes
• 1 State of Oregon Consumer Statutes
• 1 State of Ohio Consumer Statutes
• 1 State of New York Consumer Statutes
• 1 State of Missouri Consumer Statutes
• 1 State of Michigan Consumer Statutes
• 1 State of Connecticut Consumer Statutes
• 1 Home Ownership And Equity Protection Act
• 1 Federal Trade Commission Act
• 1 Fair Housing Act
• 1 Equal Credit Opportunity Act
• 1 Bankruptcy Related

Summary:

• Of those cases, there were about 513 unique plaintiffs (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit).
• Of those plaintiffs, about 183 had sued under consumer statutes before.
• Combined, those 183 plaintiffs have filed about 951 lawsuits since 2001
• Actions were filed in 109 different US District Court branches.
• About 341 different collection firms and creditors were sued.

The top courts where lawsuits were filed:

• 47 Lawsuits: Minnesota District Court – DMN
• 44 Lawsuits: California Central District Court – Western Division – Los Angeles
• 23 Lawsuits: Pennsylvania Eastern District Court – Philadelphia
• 22 Lawsuits: Illinois Northern District Court – Chicago
• 18 Lawsuits: Colorado District Court – Denver
• 16 Lawsuits: California Central District Court – Southern Division – Santa Ana
• 16 Lawsuits: California Southern District Court – San Diego
• 12 Lawsuits: Arizona District Court – Phoenix
• 12 Lawsuits: Pennsylvania Middle District Court – Scranton
• 11 Lawsuits: Connecticut District Court – New Haven

The most active consumer attorneys were:

• Representing 38 Consumers: Mark L. Vavreck
• Representing 36 Consumers: George Thomas Martin, III
• Representing 17 Consumers: Ryan Scott Lee
• Representing 16 Consumers: Brent F. Vullings
• Representing 15 Consumers: Adam Theodore Hill
• Representing 12 Consumers: Sergei Lemberg
• Representing 11 Consumers: Nicholas J. Bontrager
• Representing 11 Consumers: Craig Thor Kimmel
• Representing 10 Consumers: Matthew William Kiverts
• Representing 10 Consumers: Kenneth W. Pennington

Statistics Year to Date:
9385 total lawsuits for 2009, including:

• 7834 FDCPA
• 1119 FCRA
• 25 TCPA

Number of unique Plaintiffs: 9013 (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit)
The most active consumer attorneys of the year:

• Representing 421 Consumers: Ryan Scott Lee
• Representing 311 Consumers: Nicholas J. Bontrager
• Representing 220 Consumers: Todd Michael Friedman
• Representing 217 Consumers: Brent F. Vullings
• Representing 211 Consumers: Sergei Lemberg

About WebRecon LLC:
Creditors and collection firms use WebRecon’s services to easily segregate predictably litigious consumers from their databases. A significant percentage of consumer litigation is initiated by the same consumers over and over again, and screening them out of the general population can reduce lawsuits by as much as a third.

The FDCPA Litigant Alert | Batch up to one million accounts per hour through our massive litigant database The ‘Litigant Exchange’ | Provide your state & local lawsuit data in exchange for access to others’ lawsuit data The ‘Reputation Tracker’ | The industry’s only Consumer Web Site search engine The ‘Litigant Hotsheet’ | A quick snapshot of the most active litigious consumers sent twice monthly.