Supreme Court Issues Decision on Debt Collectors
Debt collectors are known to use a variety of scare tactics to force individuals into paying a debt. A recent Supreme Court case, however, issued a decision on how to define the role of debt collectors. In the case of Midland Funding LLC v. Johnson, the Court held that a debt collector who files a claim that is barred by the statute of limitation will be considered to have engaged in deceptive, false, or misleading conduct and therefore will not be found to have violated the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. The Case in Question The case in question is Midland Funding LLC v. Johnson, which arose in 2014 after Aleida Johnson filed a civil lawsuit against Midland Funding LLC on the basis that Midland had violated applicable law when it filed a proof of claim in Johnson’s bankruptcy case for a credit card debt whose state statute of limitations had already expired. The district court held that Midland’s conduct did not violate the law, but the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals later reversed this decision. The Supreme Court ultimately reversed the Eleventh Circuit’s decision and found that the creditor’s action was not deceptive, false, or misleading. The Supreme [...]