Cheryl L. Hyman v. Dick Tate and Harry Kirlin, D/b/a/ Tate & Kirlin Associates

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that the debt collector “was not required to independently research each account . . . before sending collection letters” and that its procedures were reasonable even when “[m]istakes can occasionally happen”
• finding that the Bona Fide Error Defense applies even when defendant did not conduct a bankruptcy search prior to collection but, instead, relied upon an agreement with a creditor-client to not refer collection amounts that are in bankruptcy
• affirming application of bona fide error defense to an FDCPA violation that occurred after debtor filed for bankruptcy
• finding that an understanding with a creditor that the creditor would not refer discharged debts to the collector was a reasonable procedure where only .01 percent of all the debts referred for collection were later discovered to have been discharged in bankruptcy
• finding debt collector satisfied bona fide error defense where it reasonably relied on its creditor and immediately ceased collection efforts once it learned of a bankruptcy filing
• noting cost of independently verifying bankruptcies compared to the low frequency of the problem

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).