FDCPA Lawsuits Fall Back to Normal; Approach 10,000 for the Year

Lawsuits filed against ARM companies claiming violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and other statutes fell back to a normal range in the first two weeks of October after spiking in late September.

The statistics are provided to the ARM industry courtesy of WebRecon LLC.

Jack Gordon, CEO of WebRecon, noted, “The most significant news of this period is that in the first few days of November, we are about to sail past 10,000 Federal FDCPA filings, on the way to an estimated 12,000 for the year 2011. This is a full month ahead of last year, when the 10,000th FDCPA suit was filed on December 1, 2010.”

FDCPA and Other Consumer Lawsuit Statistics, October 1-15, 2011

There were about 557 lawsuits filed under consumer statutes in the first half of October 2011. Here is an approximate breakdown:

• 516 FDCPA
• 129 FCRA
• 31 TCPA
• 84 TILA

Summary:

• Of those cases, there were about 639 unique plaintiffs (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit).
• Of those plaintiffs, about 271 had sued under consumer statutes before.
• Combined, those plaintiffs have filed about 1141 lawsuits since 2001
• Actions were filed in 126 different US District Court branches.
• About 597 different collection firms and creditors were sued.

The top courts where lawsuits were filed:

• 34 Lawsuits: New Jersey District Court – Newark
• 30 Lawsuits: California Central District Court – Western Division – Los Angeles
• 25 Lawsuits: Pennsylvania Eastern District Court – Philadelphia
• 24 Lawsuits: Colorado District Court – Denver
• 17 Lawsuits: Florida Southern District Court – Miami
• 16 Lawsuits: Florida Southern District Court – Fort Lauderdale
• 16 Lawsuits: Illinois Northern District Court – Chicago
• 15 Lawsuits: Michigan Eastern District Court – Detroit
• 15 Lawsuits: Minnesota District Court – Dmn
• 14 Lawsuits: California Southern District Court – San Diego

The most active consumer attorneys were:

• Representing 44 Consumers: Feng Li
• Representing 23 Consumers: Yaakov Saks
• Representing 21 Consumers: Sergei Lemberg
• Representing 19 Consumers: J Mark Meinhardt
• Representing 17 Consumers: Tammy L Hussin
• Representing 16 Consumers: Jody Berke Burton
• Representing 13 Consumers: Alexander Daniel Weisberg
• Representing 12 Consumers: Gary D Nitzkin
• Representing 12 Consumers: Shireen Hormozdi
• Representing 11 Consumers: Amy Lynn Bennecoff

Statistics Year to Date

10097 total lawsuits for 2011, including:

• 9425 FDCPA
• 1464 FCRA
• 334 TCPA
• 1271 TILA

Number of Unique Plaintiffs: 10282 (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit)

The most active consumer attorneys of the year:

• Representing 299 Consumers: Feng Li
• Representing 272 Consumers: David Michael Larson
• Representing 212 Consumers: Craig Thor Kimmel
• Representing 191 Consumers: Sergei Lemberg
• Representing 169 Consumers: Michael S Agruss

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.