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Quick analysis: Consumer litigation, particularly TCPA, has come roaring back after an anemic December 2014.

CFPB complaints look flat from November to December, but the December numbers are still likely to increase by a couple hundred complaints as they continue to trickle in.

In December, there were 172 TCPA lawsuits (after an inexplicable November dip to 94), down from a 2014 monthly average of 203. FDCPA rebounded to 836 from a 2014 monthly average of 807, and FCRA hit 203, up from it’s 2014 monthly average of 193.

Class actions are all over the place this month, with FDCPA normal at 9.2%, FCRA low at 4.9% and TCPA high at 12.8% of all litigation representing a class.

Repeat filers represented about 31% of all December litigation.

Year in Review 

Overall, lawsuits are down, thanks to FDCPA dropping 590 lawsuits from 2013’s total. This marks the 4th year in a row that FDCPA has declined, and it is the first year since 2009 that it is below 10,000. Both FCRA and TCPA are up, making up for most of the shortfall.

As predicted earlier in the year, TCPA surpassed FCRA in the number of 2014 filings. But due to the November plummet, it was a squeaker.

Overall, the 14,383 lawsuits in 2014 came in just below the 2013 total of 14,470. It is likely that this small gap will tighten as more litigation is made public in the weeks ahead, but probably not enough to overtake the lead.

For the full year 2014, here is how things have settled for litigation:

For CFPB complaints, it is impossible to draw any relevant comparison as 2013 was the first year debt collection complaints were collected, and it was a partial year. For the record, there were 11,080 complaints against debt collectors in 2013 and 39,185 in 2014 (likely to go up by a couple of hundred as CFPB complaints are still being released to the public).

Comparisons: Current Period: Previous Period: Previous Year Comp:
Dec 01 – 31, 2014 Nov 01 – 30, 2014 Dec 01 – 31, 2013
CFPB Complaints  2843 2842 0.0% 2436 16.7%
FDCPA lawsuits  836 736 13.6% 768 8.9%
FCRA lawsuits  203 181 12.2% 221 -8.1%
TCPA lawsuits  172 94 83.0% 175 -1.7%
YTD CFPB Complaints  39185 11080 253.7%
YTD FDCPA lawsuits  9720 10310 -5.7%
YTD FCRA lawsuits  2327 2289 1.7%
YTD TCPA lawsuits  2336 1871 24.9%

Complaint Statistics:

2843 consumers filed CFPB complaints against debt collectors and about 1094 consumers filed lawsuits under consumer statutes in Dec 2014. Here is an approximate breakdown:

  • 2843 CFPB Complaints
  • 836 FDCPA, 77 Class Action (9.2%)
  • 172 TCPA, 22 Class Action (12.8%)
  • 203 FCRA, 10 Class Action (4.9%)

Litigation Summary (scroll down for CFPB data):

  • Of those cases, there were about 1094 unique plaintiffs (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit).
  • Of those plaintiffs, about 339, or (31%), had sued under consumer statutes before.
  • Combined, those plaintiffs have filed about 1267 lawsuits since 2001
  • Actions were filed in 148 different US District Court branches.
  • About 829 different collection firms and creditors were sued.

The top courts where lawsuits were filed:

  • 91 Lawsuits: Illinois Northern District Court – Chicago
  • 62 Lawsuits: Pennsylvania Eastern District Court – Philadelphia
  • 52 Lawsuits: New York Eastern District Court – Brooklyn
  • 45 Lawsuits: California Central District Court – Los Angeles
  • 30 Lawsuits: New Jersey District Court – Newark
  • 30 Lawsuits: Florida Middle District Court – Tampa
  • 28 Lawsuits: Georgia Northern District Court – Atlanta
  • 26 Lawsuits: California Southern District Court – San Diego
  • 22 Lawsuits: New Jersey District Court – Trenton
  • 21 Lawsuits: Colorado District Court – Denver

The most active consumer attorneys were:

  • Representing 40 Consumers: SERGEI LEMBERG
  • Representing 24 Consumers: ADAM JON FISHBEIN
  • Representing 22 Consumers: MOHAMMED OMAR BADWAN
  • Representing 22 Consumers: AHMAD TAYSEER SULAIMAN
  • Representing 21 Consumers: JAMES O LATTURNER
  • Representing 21 Consumers: DANIEL A EDELMAN
  • Representing 19 Consumers: CATHLEEN M COMBS
  • Representing 17 Consumers: TODD M FRIEDMAN
  • Representing 17 Consumers: ARI HILLEL MARCUS
  • Representing 16 Consumers: MARK D MAILMAN

Statistics Year to Date:

12521 total lawsuits for 2014, including:

  • 9720 FDCPA
  • 2327 FCRA
  • 2336 TCPA

Number of Unique Plaintiffs for 2014: 12125 (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit)

The most active consumer attorneys of the year:

  • Representing 508 Consumers: SERGEI LEMBERG
  • Representing 213 Consumers: DAVID MICHAEL LARSON
  • Representing 186 Consumers: AHMAD TAYSEER SULAIMAN
  • Representing 183 Consumers: JOHN THOMAS STEINKAMP
  • Representing 177 Consumers: ADAM JON FISHBEIN
  • Representing 171 Consumers: MICHAEL ANTHONY EADES
  • Representing 167 Consumers: TODD M FRIEDMAN
  • Representing 166 Consumers: MOHAMMED OMAR BADWAN
  • Representing 162 Consumers: CRAIG THOR KIMMEL
  • Representing 157 Consumers: DANIEL A EDELMAN

——————————————————————————————————-

CFPB Complaint Statistics:

There were 2843 complaints filed against debt collectors in Dec 2014.

Total number of debt collectors complained about: 723

The types of debt behind the complaints were:

  • 761 Other (phone, health club, etc.) (27%)
  • 759 Unknown (27%)
  • 521 Credit card (18%)
  • 394 Medical (14%)
  • 159 Payday loan (6%)
  • 102 Mortgage (4%)
  • 62 Auto (2%)
  • 49 Non-federal student loan (2%)
  • 36 Federal student loan (1%)

Here is a breakdown of complaints:

  • 1215 Cont’d attempts collect debt not owed (43%)
  • 545 Communication tactics (19%)
  • 496 Disclosure verification of debt (17%)
  • 220 False statements or representation (8%)
  • 200 Improper contact or sharing of info (7%)
  • 167 Taking/threatening an illegal action (6%)

The top five subissues were:

  • 814 Debt is not mine (29%)
  • 348 Frequent or repeated calls (12%)
  • 331 Not given enough info to verify debt (12%)
  • 282 Debt was paid (10%)
  • 174 Attempted to collect wrong amount (6%)

The top states complaints were filed from are:

  • 359 Complaints: CA
  • 331 Complaints: TX
  • 264 Complaints: FL
  • 154 Complaints: NY
  • 120 Complaints: GA
  • 117 Complaints: IL
  • 94 Complaints: OH
  • 87 Complaints: MI
  • 85 Complaints: NJ
  • 79 Complaints: PA

The status of the month’s complaints are as follows:

  • 1900 Closed with explanation (67%)
  • 420 Closed with non-monetary relief (15%)
  • 231 In progress (8%)
  • 136 Untimely response (5%)
  • 117 Closed (4%)
  • 39 Closed with monetary relief (1%)

This includes 2624 (92%) timely responses to complaints, and 219 (8%) untimely responses.

Of the company responses, consumers accepted 0 (0%) of them, disputed 245 (9%) of them, and 2598 (91%) were N\A.

The top five days for complaints were:

  • 167 Complaints: Mon, 12/22/2014
  • 148 Complaints: Tue, 12/16/2014
  • 146 Complaints: Thu, 12/04/2014
  • 139 Complaints: Thu, 12/18/2014
  • 136 Complaints: Tue, 12/23/2014

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API Access


We offer two powerful APIs to businesses that communicate with consumers:

  • The primary Litigious Consumer Scrub uses a combination of name, geography (and optionally SSN) to identify consumers who have filed lawsuits in the past.
  • The Litigious Consumer Phone Scrub pulls every phone number from our proprietary database of litigants and runs your phones against ours.

These APIs allow you to check your data against our database on the fly. Clients love using this to handle risk management without missing a beat in their daily workflow.

Workers Comp Scrub


Workers Comp-inspired FDCPA lawsuits are growing aggressively, particularly in Florida. Only WebRecon can tell you who in your database may have a Florida Worker’s Comp case filed that could trigger litigation against you.

You can’t stop 100% of all lawsuits, but if you collect medical in Florida and you don’t have a process in place to show the court that you have a way to check every file against the Workers Comp database, then you have lost the case before it even begins.

Knock these suits out of the park with the Workers Comp Scrub.

Our Monthly Client Newsletter with The Litigant Hotsheet


Anyone can get our guest newsletter, but only clients get the version with the Litigant Hotsheet –  identifying the most active consumer Plaintiffs filing suit in jurisdictions around the country each month. Grab a coffee, shut your door and open your database to make sure you are doing all you can to stay safe.

Individual Vendor Consumer Complaint Search


Just like Vendor Monitoring, but without the monitoring. Search any business’s history of consumer complaints (Litigation, CFPB, BBB, State AG) with the click of a button! Great for on-the-fly gut checks of the companies you do business with.

Vendor Monitoring


Through vicarious liability, you can be held accountable for the bad behavior of your vendors. If they abuse consumers, for all intents and purposes, so do you. This is a big freakin’ deal!

But fear not, friend. WebRecon can track consumer litigation, CFPB, BBB and State AG Office complaints against the companies you do business with.

When a new complaint of any kind is filed against any of the companies you are monitoring, we’ll automatically push a report out to you with all of the publicly available details so you can react accordingly and if necessary, protect your interests.

The Litigious Consumer Phone Scrub


Would you knowingly dial a number attached to a consumer with a history of litigation? Of course not.

But thousands of companies do just that, every single day. If you’d like to know who they are, simply review the court dockets. They are the ones getting sued the most.

Sure, you can stop dialing consumers. But your marketing and operations teams might not be too excited about that plan.

Another idea? Identify the consumers most likely to sue you, based on previous litigation histories, and just don’t call them.

Identify high-risk phones quickly & easily, before you expose yourself to unnecessary risk.

Litigation Context Search


This is really cool.

Our primary search engine is really designed to search for parties to litigation. Need to know more about a consumer plaintiff? That’s easy. Defendant? Check. Lawyer? No problem.

But if you need to find all 1099C lawsuits filed in July 2020… not so much.

Which is why we developed the Context Search. We have pulled out and indexed the full text from over 140k consumer lawsuits and made them available to you in a search engine, with more than 1000 new lawsuits added each month. Use it to search the text of filed litigation so you can easily identify those hard-to-define trends and cases worth following.

Individual Search Engine


Instantly and easily search our proprietary database for any lawsuit participant – Plaintiff, Defendant or Attorney.

In the results, we’ll show you the full consumer litigation history of any participant, including the “docket data” (who, what, why, where, when) and – in many cases – we can even provide a copy of their actual filed lawsuits.

You can also search by phone, date range, federal/state, class action, court, statute, etc. We offer a ton of flexibility to get you the exact search result you are looking for.

The Litigant Alert Ongoing Monitoring Process


Just like our one-time batch process, but without the whole “one time” thing.

When one of your consumers files new litigation against anyone in the future, you should be the first to know. Our monitoring service can make that happen.

WebRecon can monitor your entire database (or any segment of it) for future instances of consumer litigation filed by the very consumers you are working with, right now!

It is simple to add new consumers to the watchlist, remove inactive accounts, download full reports, etc.

Best of all, we only charge you for the volume of your monitoring database – not the frequency of the searches. Search daily, weekly, every Tuesday and Friday, the 15th of each month, whatever – it is totally up to you! You won’t pay a penny more.

The Litigant Alert One-Time Batch Process


This is our flagship service. Find out why hundreds of companies won’t contact any consumers before running them through WebRecon’s Litigant Alert.

This process identifies consumers with a history of litigation quickly & easily. If they have ever filed lawsuits under FDCPA, TCPA, FCRA or similar statutes, you’ll find out here. 

WebRecon’s proprietary database is simply the most comprehensive collection of dangerous consumer litigation data in existence. 

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