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Quick analysis: 2023 Starts With Some Bite

January ’23 continued December ’22s trend of two out of three statutes (plus CFPB complaints) being up for the month. It was just a different two.

In January, CFPB complaints (+20.9%), FDCPA (+15.5%) and TCPA (+41.5%) were all up by significant margins, while FCRA (-2.7%) was down nominally. CFPB complaints (+12.2%) and TCPA lawsuits (+1.5%) are both up over last year January numbers, while FDCPA (-33.8%) and FCRA (-16.2%) are both down YTD.

In other news, putative class actions represented 14.9% of FDCPA, 52.6% of TCPA and 1.5% of FCRA lawsuits filed last month. About 42% of all plaintiffs who filed suit last month had filed at least once before. And finally, St Louis MO attorney Joel Spencer Halvorsen makes his debut at the top of this list along with Chicago-area attorney David J. Phillips for each representing the most consumers in January (17) and YTD so far in 2023.

Current Month: Previous Month: Previous
Year:		 Year to Date: Year to
Date Comp:
Jan 01, 2023
Jan 31, 2023		 Dec 01, 2022
Dec 31, 2022		 Jan 01, 2022
Jan 31, 2022		 Jan 01, 2023
Jan 31, 2023		 Jan 01, 2022
Jan 31, 2022
CFPB  5774 4774 20.9% 5145 12.2% 5774 5145 12.2%
FDCPA  343 297 15.5% 518 -33.8% 343 518 -33.8%
FCRA  439 451 -2.7% 524 -16.2% 439 524 -16.2%
TCPA  133 94 41.5% 131 1.5% 133 131 1.5%

 

Complaint Statistics:

5774 consumers filed CFPB complaints, and about 777 consumers filed lawsuits under consumer statutes from Jan 01, 2023 to Jan 31, 2023.

  • 5774 CFPB Complaints
  • 343 FDCPA, 51 Class Action (14.9%)
  • 133 TCPA, 70 Class Action (52.6%)
  • 439 FCRA, 11 Class Action (2.5%)

Litigation Summary (scroll down for CFPB data):

  • Of those cases, there were about 777 unique plaintiffs (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit).
  • Of those plaintiffs, about 323, or (42%), had sued under consumer statutes before.
  • Combined, those plaintiffs have filed about 2191 lawsuits since 2001
  • Actions were filed in 155 different US District Court branches.
  • About 540 different collection firms and creditors were sued.

The top courts where lawsuits were filed:

  • 49 Lawsuits: Georgia Northern District Court – Atlanta
  • 39 Lawsuits: Illinois Northern District Court – Chicago
  • 29 Lawsuits: Indiana Southern District Court – Indianapolis
  • 22 Lawsuits: Florida Middle District Court – Tampa
  • 22 Lawsuits: California Central District Court – Western Division – Los Angeles
  • 21 Lawsuits: Texas Northern District Court – Dallas
  • 19 Lawsuits: Florida Southern District Court – Fort Lauderdale
  • 18 Lawsuits: Texas Western District Court – Austin
  • 17 Lawsuits: Minnesota District Court – Dmn
  • 17 Lawsuits: California Southern District Court – San Diego

The most active consumer attorneys were:

  • Representing 17 Consumers: JOEL SPENCER HALVORSEN
  • Representing 17 Consumers: DAVID J PHILIPPS
  • Representing 16 Consumers: JOSEPH POWELL MCCLELLAND
  • Representing 14 Consumers: MATTHEW THOMAS BERRY
  • Representing 13 Consumers: ANTHONY PARONICH
  • Representing 13 Consumers: YAAKOV SAKS
  • Representing 11 Consumers: THOMAS MARTIN BONAN
  • Representing 10 Consumers: ARIANA KIENER
  • Representing 10 Consumers: PHILLIP WESLEY POOL
  • Representing 10 Consumers: ALLEN EDGAR ROBERTSON

Statistics Year to Date:
798 total lawsuits for 2023, including:

  • 343 FDCPA
  • 439 FCRA
  • 133 TCPA

Number of Unique Plaintiffs for 2023: 777 (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit)

The most active consumer attorneys of the year:

  • Representing 17 Consumers: JOEL SPENCER HALVORSEN
  • Representing 17 Consumers: DAVID J PHILIPPS
  • Representing 16 Consumers: JOSEPH POWELL MCCLELLAND
  • Representing 14 Consumers: MATTHEW THOMAS BERRY
  • Representing 13 Consumers: ANTHONY PARONICH
  • Representing 13 Consumers: YAAKOV SAKS
  • Representing 11 Consumers: THOMAS MARTIN BONAN
  • Representing 10 Consumers: ARIANA KIENER
  • Representing 10 Consumers: PHILLIP WESLEY POOL
  • Representing 10 Consumers: ALLEN EDGAR ROBERTSON

——————————————————————————————————-
CFPB Complaint Statistics:

There were 5774 complaints filed against debt collectors from Jan 01, 2023 to Jan 31, 2023.

Total number of debt collectors complained about: 818

The types of debt behind the complaints were:

  • 1642 Other debt (28%)
  • 1540 I do not know (27%)
  • 1249 Credit card debt (22%)
  • 839 Medical debt (15%)
  • 262 Auto debt (5%)
  • 114 Payday loan debt (2%)
  • 63 Mortgage debt (1%)
  • 36 Federal student loan debt (1%)
  • 29 Private student loan debt (1%)

Here is a breakdown of complaints:

  • 3243 Attempts to collect debt not owed (56%)
  • 977 Written notification about debt (17%)
  • 588 Took or threatened to take negative or legal action (10%)
  • 472 False statements or representation (8%)
  • 390 Communication tactics (7%)
  • 104 Threatened to contact someone or share information improperly (2%)

The top five subissues were:

  • 1813 Debt is not yours (31%)
  • 876 Debt was result of identity theft (15%)
  • 624 Didnt receive enough information to verify debt (11%)
  • 462 Debt was paid (8%)
  • 366 Attempted to collect wrong amount (6%)

The top states complaints were filed from are:

  • 660 Complaints: FL
  • 600 Complaints: TX
  • 534 Complaints: CA
  • 393 Complaints: GA
  • 309 Complaints: NY
  • 283 Complaints: IL
  • 265 Complaints: PA
  • 205 Complaints: NC
  • 203 Complaints: OH
  • 190 Complaints: MI

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

  • 4326 Closed with explanation (75%)
  • 873 In progress (15%)
  • 476 Closed with non-monetary relief (8%)
  • 75 Untimely response (1%)
  • 24 Closed with monetary relief (0%)

This includes 5548 (96%) timely responses to complaints, and 226 (4%) untimely responses.

WebRecon LLC is a part of the Americloud Holdings LLC family of companies. (855) WEB-RECON

© WebRecon LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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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