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FDCPA and Other Consumer Lawsuit Statistics, Full Year 2011 Recap

2011 ended with another record year in consumer litigation. Notably, FCRA, TCPA and Truth-in-Lending lawsuits were all up very significantly over 2010, each setting new records. FCRA litigation had a big jump after several years of relatively flat numbers, TCPA litigation more than doubled, and TILA nearly tripled over the previous year.

FDCPA litigation set a record as well, but fell just short of our projected 12,000 cases, with 11,811 cases filed in 2011. The growth rate of FDCPA litigation has plummeted over the last two years, though it is important to note that the number of FDCPA lawsuits filed does continue to grow each year, just on a shrinking trajectory. FDCPA litigation hit its peak growth in 2009, when it rose 52% over previous year numbers. That dropped to 19% in 2010, and is just 8% in 2011.

Despite some aggressive challenges from others late in the year, Colorado Springs attorney David M Larson represented 357 consumers in 2011 – more than anyone else in consumer litigation, followed by Petersburg VA attorney Dale Wood Pittman with 309, and Parsippany NJ attorney Feng Li with 299, primarily from one giant lawsuit in September.

Led by Larson’s charge, the Denver Colorado district court saw the most suits filed in it, totaling 658. Philadelphia was 2nd with 634 suits, Los Angeles was 3rd with 623, followed by Chicago with 592 and Newark with 486.

Statewide, California led with 1654 lawsuits in 2011. Florida was next with 1146 lawsuits, followed by New York with 1128, Pennsylvania with 940 and New Jersey with 711.

For your convenience, we are providing annual comparisons of FDCPA, FCRA, TCPA and TILA litigation. Missing data indicates years we do not have reliable data for. Please note, these statistics are for cases filed in federal U.S. District Courts only.

Annual comparisons:
2011: 11,811 FDCPA Cases, 1838 FCRA Cases, 660 TCPA Cases, 1462 TILA Cases
2010: 10,859 FDCPA Cases, 1295 FCRA Cases, 272 TCPA Cases, 529 TILA Cases
2009: 9135 FDCPA Cases, 1174 FCRA Cases
2008: 6025 FDCPA Cases, 1164 FCRA Cases
2007: 4372 FDCPA Cases, 1347 FCRA Cases
2006: 3710 FDCPA Cases, 955 FCRA Cases
2005: 3215 FDCPA Cases

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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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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.

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.

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.

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.