On February 25, 2022, the United States District Court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled in a lawsuit that a public records vendor was a consumer reporting agency (CRA) that assembled “consumer reports” under a federal law called the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) that regulates background checks in America.
The Plaintiffs in the case were a married couple who applied to refinance their home mortgage with a bank. As part of that application, the bank engaged a company to conduct a public records search of the open judgment directory and the municipal lien directory pertaining to the Plaintiffs and prepare a report for the bank.
According to the Plaintiffs, the report to the bank erroneously stated that they had outstanding civil judgment debts. The Plaintiffs claimed the inaccuracies in the report caused the bank to delay approval, cost them money in the form of higher interim payments, damaged their credit reputation, and caused them emotional distress.
The Plaintiffs sued the public records vendor for negligently and willfully violating the FCRA by failing to follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy when preparing a consumer report (15 U.S.C. Sec. 1681e(b)) and by failing to conduct a reasonable reinvestigation of their dispute (15 U.S.C. Sec. 1681i(a)).
The public records vendor argued that the FCRA did not apply because it is not a “consumer reporting agency” and does not supply “consumer reports” within the meaning of the FCRA....
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