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Quick analysis: 2015 has started with a whimper, with CFPB complaints just edging up from December 2014, but FDCPA/FCRA/TCPA litigation all decisively lower than they were in December (9%, 14.1% and 17.9%, respectively).

The lift in CFPB complaints is 7.1%, though history shows that will tighten up in the weeks ahead as more cases from January are made public.

Class actions are still all over the board, continuing a new trend from last month, with 15.7% of FDCPA, 4.2% of TCPA and 7.9% of FCRA lawsuits being filed that way.

Repeat filers represented about 36% of all January litigation.

Comparisons: Current Period: Previous Period: Previous Year Comp:
Jan 01 – 31, 2015 Dec 01 – 31, 2014 Jan 01 – 31, 2014
CFPB Complaints  3204 2992 7.1% 3280 -2.3%
FDCPA lawsuits  765 841 -9.0% 726 5.4%
FCRA lawsuits  177 206 -14.1% 200 -11.5%
TCPA lawsuits  142 173 -17.9% 213 -33.3%
YTD CFPB Complaints  3204 3280 -2.3%
YTD FDCPA lawsuits  765 726 5.4%
YTD FCRA lawsuits  177 200 -11.5%
YTD TCPA lawsuits  142 213 -33.3%

Complaint Statistics:

3204 consumers filed CFPB complaints against debt collectors and about 929 consumers filed lawsuits under consumer statutes in Jan 2015. Here is an approximate breakdown:

  • 3204 CFPB Complaints
  • 765 FDCPA, 120 Class Action (15.7%)
  • 142 TCPA, 6 Class Action (4.2%)
  • 177 FCRA, 14 Class Action (7.9%)

Litigation Summary (scroll down for CFPB data):

  • Of those cases, there were about 929 unique plaintiffs (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit).
  • Of those plaintiffs, about 335, or (36%), had sued under consumer statutes before.
  • Combined, those plaintiffs have filed about 1270 lawsuits since 2001
  • Actions were filed in 146 different US District Court branches.
  • About 706 different collection firms and creditors were sued.

The top courts where lawsuits were filed:

  • 75 Lawsuits: Illinois Northern District Court – Chicago
  • 51 Lawsuits: New York Eastern District Court – Brooklyn
  • 41 Lawsuits: Pennsylvania Eastern District Court – Philadelphia
  • 31 Lawsuits: Georgia Northern District Court – Atlanta
  • 30 Lawsuits: Minnesota District Court – Dmn
  • 23 Lawsuits: Indiana Southern District Court – Indianapolis
  • 23 Lawsuits: New York Western District Court – Buffalo
  • 22 Lawsuits: California Central District Court – Los Angeles
  • 21 Lawsuits: New Jersey District Court – Newark
  • 19 Lawsuits: Michigan Eastern District Court – Detroit

The most active consumer attorneys were:

  • Representing 28 Consumers: SERGEI LEMBERG
  • Representing 25 Consumers: DANIEL A EDELMAN
  • Representing 23 Consumers: ADAM JON FISHBEIN
  • Representing 22 Consumers: CATHLEEN M COMBS
  • Representing 21 Consumers: JAMES O LATTURNER
  • Representing 20 Consumers: VICKI PIONTEK
  • Representing 19 Consumers: SETH ANDREWS
  • Representing 19 Consumers: SHPETIM ADEMI
  • Representing 19 Consumers: MARK A ELDRIDGE
  • Representing 19 Consumers: JOHN D BLYTHIN

Statistics Year to Date:

918 total lawsuits for 2015, including:

  • 765 FDCPA
  • 177 FCRA
  • 142 TCPA

Number of Unique Plaintiffs for 2015: 929 (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit)

The most active consumer attorneys of the year:

  • Representing 28 Consumers: SERGEI LEMBERG
  • Representing 25 Consumers: DANIEL A EDELMAN
  • Representing 23 Consumers: ADAM JON FISHBEIN
  • Representing 22 Consumers: CATHLEEN M COMBS
  • Representing 21 Consumers: JAMES O LATTURNER
  • Representing 20 Consumers: VICKI PIONTEK
  • Representing 19 Consumers: SETH ANDREWS
  • Representing 19 Consumers: SHPETIM ADEMI
  • Representing 19 Consumers: MARK A ELDRIDGE
  • Representing 19 Consumers: JOHN D BLYTHIN

——————————————————————————————————-

CFPB Complaint Statistics:

There were 3204 complaints filed against debt collectors in Jan 2015.

Total number of debt collectors complained about: 806

The types of debt behind the complaints were:

  • 935 Other (phone, health club, etc.) (29%)
  • 707 Unknown (22%)
  • 643 Credit card (20%)
  • 507 Medical (16%)
  • 174 Payday loan (5%)
  • 71 Mortgage (2%)
  • 66 Auto (2%)
  • 59 Non-federal student loan (2%)
  • 42 Federal student loan (1%)

Here is a breakdown of complaints:

  • 1397 Cont’d attempts collect debt not owed (44%)
  • 566 Communication tactics (18%)
  • 552 Disclosure verification of debt (17%)
  • 259 False statements or representation (8%)
  • 252 Improper contact or sharing of info (8%)
  • 178 Taking/threatening an illegal action (6%)

The top five subissues were:

  • 845 Debt is not mine (26%)
  • 386 Debt was paid (12%)
  • 359 Frequent or repeated calls (11%)
  • 337 Not given enough info to verify debt (11%)
  • 202 Attempted to collect wrong amount (6%)

The top states complaints were filed from are:

  • 399 Complaints: CA
  • 317 Complaints: TX
  • 275 Complaints: FL
  • 183 Complaints: NY
  • 156 Complaints: GA
  • 141 Complaints: IL
  • 128 Complaints: PA
  • 107 Complaints: OH
  • 98 Complaints: VA
  • 85 Complaints: NJ

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

  • 2139 Closed with explanation (67%)
  • 523 Closed with non-monetary relief (16%)
  • 230 In progress (7%)
  • 146 Closed (5%)
  • 133 Untimely response (4%)
  • 33 Closed with monetary relief (1%)

This includes 2972 (93%) timely responses to complaints, and 232 (7%) untimely responses.

Of the company responses, consumers accepted 0 (%) of them, disputed 339 (11%) of them, and 2865 (89%) were N\A.

The top five days for complaints were:

  • 186 Complaints: Wed, 01/28/2015
  • 171 Complaints: Tue, 01/27/2015
  • 163 Complaints: Wed, 01/21/2015
  • 152 Complaints: Thu, 01/22/2015
  • 152 Complaints: Fri, 01/23/2015

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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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