FDCPA Lawsuits Spike in First Half of September

The number of lawsuits filed against ARM companies claiming violations of the FDCPA and other consumer statutes jumped in the first half of September after declining though August.

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

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

There were about 530 lawsuits filed under consumer statutes in the first half of September 2011. Here is an approximate breakdown:

• 456 FDCPA
• 90 FCRA
• 32 TILA
• 11 TCPA

Summary:

• Of those cases, there were about 587 unique plaintiffs (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit).
• Of those plaintiffs, about 182 had sued under consumer statutes before.
• Combined, those plaintiffs have filed about 1041 lawsuits since 2001.
• Actions were filed in 129 different US District Court branches.
• About 616 different collection firms and creditors were sued.

The top courts where lawsuits were filed:

• 28 Lawsuits: Colorado District Court – Denver
• 26 Lawsuits: Illinois Northern District Court – Chicago
• 25 Lawsuits: California Central District Court – Western Division – Los Angeles
• 23 Lawsuits: Minnesota District Court – Dmn
• 20 Lawsuits: New Jersey District Court – Newark
• 16 Lawsuits: Pennsylvania Eastern District Court – Philadelphia
• 13 Lawsuits: New York Eastern District Court – Brooklyn
• 13 Lawsuits: Alabama Northern District Court – Southern
• 13 Lawsuits: California Southern District Court – San Diego
• 12 Lawsuits: Georgia Northern District Court – Atlanta

The most active consumer attorneys were:

• Representing 21 Consumers: Shireen Hormozdi
• Representing 11 Consumers: David Michael Larson
• Representing 11 Consumers: Tammy Lee Hussin
• Representing 11 Consumers: Deborah P Gutierrez
• Representing 11 Consumers: Yaakov Saks
• Representing 9 Consumers: Craig J Ehrlich
• Representing 9 Consumers: Elizabeth Joan Cabraser
• Representing 9 Consumers: Gregory Bradley Linkh
• Representing 8 Consumers: Craig Thor Kimmel
• Representing 8 Consumers: Sergei Lemberg

Statistics Year to Date

8910 total lawsuits for 2011, including:

• 8106 FDCPA
• 986 FCRA
• 768 TILA
• 278 TCPA

Number of Unique Plaintiffs: 8875 (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit)

The most active consumer attorneys of the year:

• Representing 243 Consumers: David Michael Larson
• Representing 197 Consumers: Craig Thor Kimmel
• Representing 151 Consumers: Michael S Agruss
• Representing 151 Consumers: Sergei Lemberg
• Representing 146 Consumers: Darin Shaw

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.