On March 17, the New York Supreme Court in Kings County granted a debt collection company’s motion to dismiss a complaint alleging violations of the FCRA, finding the plaintiff lacked standing because she failed to allege any actual harm resulting from the alleged inaccurate credit reporting. The court held that the consumer’s claims were indistinguishable from recent Appellate Division decisions dismissing similar statutory damage claims under the FDCPA for lack of standing. The consumer acknowledged in her complaint that she could not bring the action in federal court because her alleged injuries were insufficient to establish Article III standing, and instead pursued the claim in state court seeking statutory damages without identifying specific harm.

The case arose after the consumer allegedly defaulted on a credit account in 2019, and the debt collection company reported purportedly inaccurate information about the account to a consumer reporting agency. Despite repeatedly disputing the purported inaccuracies, the consumer alleged the collection company continued to report the same information. However, the consumer did not allege that her credit report had been released to a third party, did not detail the amount of payments she had made, and did not allege that the incorrect information affected her credit score or her ability to obtain a loan. Applying New York’s common-law standing standard, which requires a plaintiff to show “a cognizable harm that is not tenuous, ephemeral, or conjectural,” the court found that a procedural violation of the FCRA without an allegation of actual injury was insufficient.