Albuerne et al v. Equifax Information Services, LLC et al

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF KANSAS
MARCELINO ALBUERNE and RUBY
JENKINS,
Plaintiffs,
v.
RENT RECOVERY SOLUTIONS, LLC,
Defendant.
Case No. 24-CV-04043-JAR
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
Plaintiffs Marcelino Albuerne and Ruby Jenkins bring this action against Defendants
Equifax Information Services, LLC (“Equifax”), Experian Information Solutions, Inc.
(“Experian”), TransUnion LLC (“TransUnion”), and Rent Recovery Solutions, LLC (“Rent
Recovery”), alleging violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”). Plaintiffs’
Complaint asserts three Counts: Counts I and II against Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, and
Count III against Rent Recovery.1 Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion have since been
dismissed from this case,2 leaving only Count III, which alleges that Rent Recovery violated 15
U.S.C. § 1681s-2(b) by failing to conduct a reasonable investigation after receiving notice of
Plaintiffs’ credit reporting disputes.
This matter is before the Court on Rent Recovery’s Motion for Summary Judgment
(Doc. 79), Plaintiffs’ Motion for Partial Summary Judgment (Doc. 85), and Rent Recovery’s
Motion to Exclude Expert Testimony and Report (Doc. 83). The motions are fully briefed, and
the Court is prepared to rule. For the reasons explained below, the Court grants Plaintiffs’
1 Doc. 1.
2 Docs. 51, 53, 60.
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motion for partial summary judgment, denies Rent Recovery’s motion for summary judgment,
and denies Rent Recovery’s motion to exclude expert testimony as moot.
I. The Parties’ Cross-Motions for Summary Judgment
A. Summary Judgment Standard
Summary judgment is appropriate if the moving party demonstrates that there is no
genuine dispute as to any material fact and that it is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.3 In
applying this standard, the Court views the evidence and all reasonable inferences therefrom in
the light most favorable to the non-moving party.4 “There is no genuine issue of material fact
unless the evidence, construed in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, is such that a
reasonable jury could return a verdict for the non-moving party.”5 A fact is “material” if, under
the applicable substantive law, it is “essential to the proper disposition of the claim.”6 An issue
of fact is “genuine” if “the evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the
non-moving party.”7
The moving party initially must show the absence of a genuine issue of material fact and
entitlement to judgment as a matter of law.8 Once the movant has met this initial burden, the
burden shifts to the non-moving party to “set forth specific facts showing that there is a genuine
issue for trial.”9 The non-moving party may not simply rest upon its pleadings to satisfy its
3 Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a); see also Grynberg v. Total, 538 F.3d 1336, 1346 (10th Cir. 2008).
4 City of Herriman v. Bell, 590 F.3d 1176, 1181 (10th Cir. 2010).
5 Bones v. Honeywell Int’l, Inc., 366 F.3d 869, 875 (10th Cir. 2004).
6 Wright ex rel. Trust Co. of Kan. v. Abbott Labs., Inc., 259 F.3d 1226, 1231–32 (10th Cir. 2001) (citing
Adler v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 144 F.3d 664, 670 (10th Cir. 1998)).
7 Thomas v. Metro. Life Ins. Co., 631 F.3d 1153, 1160 (10th Cir. 2011) (quoting Anderson v. Liberty Lobby,
Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986)).
8 Spaulding v. United Transp. Union, 279 F.3d 901, 904 (10th Cir. 2002) (citing Celotex Corp. v. Catrett,
477 U.S. 317, 323–24 (1986)).
9 Anderson, 477 U.S. at 256.
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burden.10 Rather, the non-moving party must “set forth specific facts that would be admissible in
evidence in the event of trial from which a rational trier of fact could find for the non-movant.”11
To accomplish this, the facts “must be identified by reference to an affidavit, a deposition
transcript or a specific exhibit incorporated therein.”12 The non-moving party cannot avoid
summary judgment by repeating conclusory opinions, allegations unsupported by specific facts,
or speculation.13
“Where, as here, the parties file cross motions for summary judgment, we are entitled to
assume that no evidence needs to be considered other than that filed by the parties, but summary
judgment is nevertheless inappropriate if disputes remain as to material facts.”14 Cross summary
judgment motions should be evaluated as two separate motions.15 Just because the Court denies
one does not require that it grant the other.16
Finally, summary judgment is not a “disfavored procedural shortcut;” on the contrary, it
is an important procedure “designed ‘to secure the just, speedy and inexpensive determination of
every action.’”17
10 Id.; accord Eck v. Parke, Davis & Co., 256 F.3d 1013, 1017 (10th Cir. 2001).
11 Mitchell v. City of Moore, 218 F.3d 1190, 1197–98 (10th Cir. 2000) (quoting Adler, 144 F.3d at 671).
12 Adams v. Am. Guar. & Liab. Ins. Co., 233 F.3d 1242, 1246 (10th Cir. 2000).
13 Argo v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Kan., Inc., 452 F.3d 1193, 1199 (10th Cir. 2006) (citations omitted).
14 James Barlow Fam. Ltd. P’ship v. David M. Munson, Inc., 132 F.3d 1316, 1319 (10th Cir. 1997)
(citation omitted).
15 Banner Bank v. First Am. Title Ins. Co., 916 F.3d 1323, 1326 (10th Cir. 2019).
16 Id.
17 Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 327 (1986) (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 1).
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B. Uncontroverted Facts
The following facts are either uncontroverted, stipulated to, or viewed in the light most
favorable to the non-moving party.
1. Plaintiffs’ Final Rent Payment Dispute with Montane
Plaintiffs, then a married couple, jointly rented an apartment at the Montane Apartment
Complex (“Montane”) in Parker, Colorado. Plaintiffs made their monthly rent payments through
the Pay Ready application. Plaintiffs’ lease was scheduled to end in September 2022.
On September 21, 2022, Plaintiffs went to Montane’s leasing office and delivered a
$927.10 cashier’s check for the final and full payment due under their lease plus other fees.
Plaintiffs gave the cashier’s check to a Montane representative whose name they do not recall.
That representative provided the check to Montane’s assistant property manager, Ruth White.
Later that same day, Plaintiffs emailed Montane’s billing department to confirm receipt of the
payment. White responded and confirmed that Montane had received Plaintiffs’ check and that
it would be posted to their account.
After Plaintiffs moved out and their lease ended, Montane’s billing department emailed
Plaintiffs on October 5, 2022, stating that Plaintiffs still owed an unpaid balance of $927.10 on
their Montane account. Albuerne responded to the email with (1) a screenshot reflecting a
$927.10 withdrawal from his bank account on September 21, 2022, and (2) the email in which
White confirmed Montane’s receipt of the check.
2. Placement of the Montane Account with Rent Recovery
On February 13, 2023, Plaintiffs’ Montane account was placed for collection with Rent
Recovery. That same day, Pay Ready, acting as an intermediary between Rent Recovery and
Montane, forwarded Rent Recovery an email thread reflecting Montane’s response to the
payment issue. In that thread, Montane stated it did not have a check or cashier’s check for
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Plaintiffs’ account, and that it had looked back through the physical checks from September and
October 2022 as well as its electronic system but did not find a check for that amount. Montane
suggested that, if the cashier’s check was issued, Plaintiffs could ask their bank to trace whether
it was cashed and by whom. Yasmin Appawu, Rent Recovery’s compliance auditor and
administrator, saved the contents of that email thread in Rent Recovery’s account notes.
Around this time, Plaintiffs discovered that a Rent Recovery collection account with a
balance of $927.00 was appearing on their credit reports. Rent Recovery furnishes debt
information to the national consumer reporting agencies (“CRAs”), and it had furnished
information to the CRAs about Plaintiffs’ Montane rental account. The account was reported as
owed to Rent Recovery, reflected a partial account number of 424***, listed an open date of
February 13, 2023, reported a balance of $927.00, and identified Montane as the original
creditor. On March 8, 2023, Albuerne called Rent Recovery to dispute the debt and told Rent
Recovery that he had given Montane a cashier’s check in September 2022 for the amount at
issue. In response, Rent Recovery advised Albuerne that he could mail documentation
supporting his dispute.
On March 28, 2023, Rent Recovery received written correspondence from Albuerne
disputing the account. The correspondence included: (1) the October 5, 2022 email from
Montane stating Plaintiffs owed $927.10; (2) a screenshot reflecting a $927.10 withdrawal from
Albuerne’s bank account on September 21, 2022; and (3) a November 4, 2022 email from
Albuerne to Montane stating he was still being told he had not paid the disputed amount,
asserting that three people at the office witnessed him pay the disputed amount, and attaching the
same bank account screenshot.
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In response to the March 28, 2023 correspondence, Appawu opened an investigation. As
part of her investigation, Appawu reviewed the materials Albuerne provided and reviewed Rent
Recovery’s account notes. The account notes reflected that Albuerne had previously disputed
the debt by phone and asserted he paid Montane with a cashier’s check in September 2022, and
that Montane had reported that it searched its physical checks from September and October 2022
and its electronic system, but could not locate or confirm posting of the payment.
Rent Recovery has a policy to contact its client upon receipt of a mailed dispute.
However, Appawu did not contact Montane at that time because, in her view, Montane had
already informed Rent Recovery that it searched for the check and could not find it.
Between March and July 2023, Albuerne made multiple additional phone calls to Rent
Recovery disputing the account and reiterating that he had paid Montane by cashier’s check in
September 2022. Rent Recovery’s collectors handled these telephonic disputes and documented
them in the account notes. On July 20, 2023, one of Albuerne’s telephonic disputes was
escalated to Appawu. That day, Appawu emailed Montane requesting a reinvestigation and
asking Montane to confirm whether the balance had been paid in full directly to the community,
including the date of any payment.
On July 30, 2023, Montane responded that it had looked back and did not see payment
for Plaintiffs’ account. Based on Montane’s response, Appawu confirmed that Montane did not
receive Albuerne’s cashier’s check.
3. Plaintiffs’ Disputes to the CRAs and Rent Recovery’s Investigation
On October 18, 2023, Albuerne mailed disputes to Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion
challenging Rent Recovery’s reporting of the collection account. In his dispute letters, Albuerne
asserted that the account was inaccurate because he had paid the balance due with a cashier’s
check on September 21, 2022. In support of his disputes, he enclosed the September 21, 2022
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email from Montane in which White confirmed receipt of the cashier’s check, along with a
screenshot from his bank account reflecting a $927.10 withdrawal. The CRAs received
Albuerne’s disputes via USPS Certified Mail.
In December 2023, Jenkins similarly disputed the collection account with the CRAs by
mailing disputes to Equifax on December 12, 2023, and to Experian and TransUnion on
December 14, 2023. Jenkins stated the account was inaccurate because she had paid the disputed
amount with a cashier’s check on September 21, 2022. She enclosed the same supporting
materials, including White’s email confirming receipt of the check and the bank screenshot
reflecting the $927.10 withdrawal. The CRAs received Jenkins’s disputes via USPS Certified
Mail.
After receiving Plaintiffs’ disputes, the CRAs transmitted automated credit dispute
verifications (“ACDVs”) to Rent Recovery. An ACDV is an electronic form that CRAs use to
forward a consumer’s credit reporting dispute to the company that reported the account and to
request an investigation and response. Rent Recovery received three ACDVs relevant here: (1) a
TransUnion ACDV concerning Albuerne dated October 27, 2023; (2) an Equifax ACDV
concerning Jenkins dated December 29, 2023; and (3) an Experian ACDV concerning Jenkins
dated February 2, 2024.
Appawu opened an investigation for each ACDV Rent Recovery received. In each
investigation, Appawu (1) located the account using the demographic information contained in
the ACDV; (2) reviewed the dispute code, FCRA-related information, and any images attached
to the ACDV; and (3) reviewed Rent Recovery’s account notes to determine whether the notes
contained additional information about the dispute.
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Based on her review of the ACDVs and the attached materials, Appawu understood that
Plaintiffs were disputing the debt on the ground that they had paid Montane with a cashier’s
check in September 2022, and she recognized the dispute as the same payment issue she had
investigated previously. The supporting materials attached to the ACDVs included the
September 2022 email chain between Albuerne and Montane, in which White stated that
Montane had received Albuerne’s cashier’s check, which had not been part of Rent Recovery’s
earlier dispute investigations.
After reviewing the ACDVs, Appawu also reviewed Rent Recovery’s account notes.
Those notes reflected that, in February 2023 and again in July 2023, Montane had confirmed that
it did not receive Plaintiffs’ payment and that the payment had not been posted to Montane’s
system. Appawu noted that although the email in which White confirmed receipt of Plaintiffs’
cashier’s check was dated September 2022, Montane later reported that it could not locate the
cashier’s check and did not show the payment as posted. Appawu further noted that the images
attached to the ACDVs included screenshots of a bank account withdrawal for the disputed
amount, but Plaintiffs did not identify the bank associated with the account or provide a full bank
account number.
Rent Recovery’s policy is to contact its client when a consumer claims to have previously
paid a disputed debt. However, Appawu did not contact Montane again because, in her view,
Montane had already informed Rent Recovery twice that it did not receive the payment as
Plaintiffs claimed. Appawu then completed each investigation and responded to the ACDVs that
the “[a]ccount information [was] accurate as of [the] date reported.”18 Rent Recovery did not
18 Doc. 81-4 ¶ 58.
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modify, delete, or permanently block the information that Plaintiffs disputed with the national
CRAs.
On January 13, 2024, Equifax issued a dispute response to Jenkins stating that Rent
Recovery had verified that the subject balance was being accurately reported. On February 22,
2024, Jenkins received a dispute response from Experian, likewise stating that Rent Recovery
had verified the subject balance was being accurately reported. On March 13, 2024, Jenkins
downloaded her updated TransUnion credit report and saw that the Rent Recovery collection
account was still being reported. The following day, March 14, 2024, Jenkins retrieved her
updated Equifax credit report and again saw that the Rent Recovery account was still being
reported.
C. Discussion
In Count III, Plaintiffs allege that Defendant violated 15 U.S.C. § 1681s-2(b) by failing to
conduct a reasonable investigation after receiving notice of Plaintiffs’ disputes from the CRAs.
Defendant moves for summary judgment on this claim. Plaintiffs move for partial summary
judgment on liability only, reserving the issue of damages for trial.
“Congress enacted [the] FCRA in 1970 to ensure fair and accurate credit reporting,
promote efficiency in the banking system, and protect consumer privacy.”19 “The FCRA
imposes obligations on three types of entities: consumer reporting agencies, users of consumer
reports and furnishers of information to consumer reporting agencies.”20
A “furnisher of information” is “an entity which transmits information concerning a
particular debt owed by a particular consumer to consumer reporting agencies.”21 The FCRA
19 Safeco Ins. Co. of Am. v. Burr, 551 U.S. 47, 52 (2007).
20 Jarrett v. Bank of Am., 421 F. Supp. 2d 1350, 1353 (D. Kan. 2006).
21 Id. at 1352 n.1.
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“imposes two sets of duties on furnishers of information.”22 First, under § 1681s-2(a), furnishers
of information have a general duty to provide accurate information to a consumer reporting
agency.23 Congress did not create a private right of action for violations of § 1681s-2(a).24
Second, under § 1681s-2(b), furnishers of information have a duty, after receiving notice from a
CRA of a dispute by a consumer regarding the completeness or accuracy of an account, to:
(1) investigate the disputed information; (2) review all relevant information
provided by the CRA; (3) report the results of the investigation to the CRA; (4)
report the results of the investigation to all other CRAs if the investigation reveals
that the information is incomplete or inaccurate; and (5) modify, delete, or
permanently block the reporting of the disputed information if it is determined to
be inaccurate, incomplete, or unverifiable.25
Unlike § 1681s-2(a), § 1681s-2(b) creates a private cause of action by a consumer against a
furnisher of credit information.26 To establish a violation of § 1681s-2(b), Plaintiffs must show
(1) the information Rent Recovery furnished was inaccurate or incomplete, and (2) Rent
Recovery’s investigation into the accuracy of the furnished information was unreasonable.27
The parties do not dispute that Rent Recovery is a furnisher of information, nor do they
dispute that the information Rent Recovery furnished was inaccurate or incomplete. The parties’
cross-motions instead turn on the reasonableness of Rent Recovery’s investigation. Plaintiffs
contend that the uncontroverted facts establish that Rent Recovery’s investigation into the
accuracy of the information it furnished was unreasonable and that Plaintiffs are therefore
22 Tilley v. Glob. Payments, Inc., 603 F. Supp. 2d 1314, 1322 (D. Kan. 2009).
23 Id.
24 Id.
25 Llewellyn v. Allstate Home Loans, Inc., 711 F.3d 1173, 1178–79 (10th Cir. 2013) (quoting Pinson v.
Equifax Credit Info. Servs., Inc., 316 F. App’x 744, 750 (10th Cir. 2009)).
26 Tilley, 603 F. Supp. 2d at 1322.
27 Ward v. Nat’l Credit Sys., Inc., No. 21-CV-02597-NYW-JPO, 2024 WL 2846609, at *4 (D. Colo. June 5,
2024).
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entitled to summary judgment. Rent Recovery contends that the uncontroverted facts establish
that its investigation was reasonable and that it is therefore entitled to summary judgment.
Accordingly, the Court resolves the parties’ cross-motions based on whether the record
establishes the reasonableness or unreasonableness of Rent Recovery’s investigation.
A “furnisher’s duty to investigate arises only after a CRA notifies the furnisher of a
dispute.”28 “When a furnisher receives a dispute notice from a CRA, it must undertake a
reasonable investigation of the dispute.”29 “A reasonable investigation is one that a reasonably
prudent person would undertake under the circumstances.”30 Whether an investigation was
reasonable under the FCRA “turns on what relevant information was provided to a furnisher by
the CRA giving notice of a dispute.”31 “The reasonableness of the investigation is to be
determined by an objective standard, and the burden of showing the investigation was
unreasonable is on the plaintiff.”32 “Whether a defendant’s investigation is reasonable is a
factual question normally reserved for trial; however, summary judgment is proper if the
reasonableness of the defendant’s procedures is beyond question.”33
Beginning with Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, Plaintiffs contend that Rent
Recovery’s investigation was unreasonable because Rent Recovery failed to further investigate
Plaintiffs’ dispute and instead relied on its prior investigations, even after Plaintiffs provided new
information through the ACDVs, including White’s September 21, 2022 email, in which White
28 Willis v. Cap. One Corp., 611 F. App’x 500, 502 (10th Cir. 2015).
29 Hampton v. Barclays Bank Delaware, 478 F. Supp. 3d 1113, 1138 (D. Kan. 2020) (emphasis added)
(citing Maiteki v. Marten Transp. Ltd., 828 F.3d 1272, 1275 (10th Cir. 2016)).
30 Maiteki, 828 F.3d at 1275 (citation modified) (quoting Seamans v. Temple Univ., 744 F.3d 853, 864 (3d
Cir. 2014)).
31 Id. (quoting Boggio v. USAA Fed. Sav. Bank, 696 F.3d 611, 617 (6th Cir. 2012)).
32 Id. (citation modified) (quoting Chiang v. Verizon New Eng. Inc., 595 F.3d 26, 37 (1st Cir. 2010)).
33 Id. (quoting Westra v. Credit Control of Pinellas, 409 F.3d 825, 827 (7th Cir. 2005)).
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confirmed that Montane had received Plaintiffs’ cashier’s check for the disputed amount.
Plaintiffs argue that, once Defendant received this documentation, a reasonably prudent
investigation required more than verifying the account based on Defendant’s internal notes and
prior communications with Montane.
In support of their argument, Plaintiffs rely on Parsell v. First Tech Fed. Credit Union,34
where the court granted partial summary judgment to the plaintiff after concluding that the
defendant failed to conduct a reasonable investigation in response to a later ACDV, even though
that ACDV included additional supporting documents that had not been part of the earlier
disputes.35 Rather than addressing the new materials, the furnisher treated the later dispute as
duplicative of the prior disputes and verified the account without further inquiry.36 The court
explained that it “agrees with [the plaintiff] that she is entitled to summary judgment with respect
to [the furnisher’s] response to the fifth ACDV submitted in connection with her dispute . . .
because [in part] [the furnisher] erroneously treated it as duplicative when [the plaintiff] had, in
fact, submitted additional documents to TransUnion that were included in the ACDV.”37
The Court agrees with Plaintiffs and finds Parsell persuasive. The record reflects that,
when Rent Recovery received the three ACDVs, they included White’s September 21, 2022
confirmation email, which had not been part of Rent Recovery’s earlier dispute investigations.
Despite receiving this new documentation, Rent Recovery did not take additional steps to
reconcile White’s confirmation email with its account notes reflecting Montane’s later position
that it did not have a check for Plaintiffs’ account. Although Rent Recovery’s policy calls for
34 No. SA-22-CV-01002-XR, 2025 WL 687965, at *7–9 (W.D. Tex. Mar. 3, 2025).
35 Id. at *7.
36 Id.
37 Id.
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contacting its client when a consumer disputes a debt as previously paid, Rent Recovery did not
contact Montane to address White’s confirmation email or to ask what happened to the cashier’s
check after White confirmed Montane had received it, why Montane later could not locate the
check, or why the payment was never posted to Plaintiffs’ account. Instead, like the furnisher in
Parsell that treated a later ACDV as duplicative despite the inclusion of additional supporting
materials, Rent Recovery treated Plaintiffs’ ACDVs as similar to Plaintiffs’ prior disputes and
relied only on the earlier confirmations from Montane in verifying the account as accurate.
Defendant argues that the facts of this case instead “fall squarely within the facts of” the
Tenth Circuit’s decision in Maiteki v. Marten Transport Ltd.38 In Maiteki, a former truck driver
disputed a negative safety code his former employer reported to a CRA that publishes reports
regarding truck drivers’ driving records.39 The plaintiff asserted that the negative safety code
was “incorrect” because he had “no accidents/incidents” listed.40 The employer investigated the
dispute by reviewing the information it received from the CRA, the plaintiff’s personnel file, and
its internal human-resources records.41 The personnel file included an Illinois State Police
driver/vehicle examination report indicating that the plaintiff exceeded the speed limit, along
with related disciplinary warnings.42 The human-resources records included entries reflecting
speed-monitoring data gathered by a third-party system used on the employer’s trucks and a
warning issued to the plaintiff based on that data.43 By the time of the reinvestigation, the
38 828 F.3d 1272 (10th Cir. 2016); Doc. 95 at 14.
39 Maiteki, 828 F.3d at 1273–74.
40 Id. at 1274.
41 Id.
42 Id.
43 Id.
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employer no longer had access to the underlying third-party speed-monitoring records.44 Rather
than attempting to obtain those records from the vendor, the investigator contacted the fleet
manager who made the relevant entry in the plaintiff’s personnel file and confirmed that she had
reviewed the underlying speed-monitoring reports and that the human-resources records were
accurate.45
On appeal, the plaintiff argued the investigation was unreasonable because the employer
failed to contact either the Illinois State Police or the speed-monitoring vendor to verify the
information in its files.46 The Tenth Circuit rejected that argument and affirmed summary
judgment for the employer.47 As to the Illinois State Police report, the court reasoned that,
because the investigator “had no reason to question the documents,” her failure to contact the
Illinois State Police “does not cast doubt on the reasonableness of the investigation.”48 As to the
third-party speed-monitoring data, the court explained that “instead of relying on the bare”
human-resources records, the investigator followed up with the fleet manager, who confirmed
she had reviewed the underlying speed-monitoring reports and that the human-resources records
were accurate, and that “[i]t was reasonable for [the investigator] to rely on [the fleet manager’s]
confirmation.”49
Defendant’s reliance on Maiteki is unavailing. Unlike the investigator in Maiteki,
Appawu had reason to question the reliability of Rent Recovery’s existing records because the
ACDV materials included White’s 2022 email confirmation. Yet after receiving the ACDVs
44 Id.
45 Id.
46 Id. at 1276.
47 Id. at 1276–77.
48 Id. at 1276.
49 Id. at 1276–77.
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containing that email, Appawu did not follow up with White or anyone at Montane, nor did she
seek to reconcile White’s confirmation with Montane’s later position that it could not locate the
cashier’s check.
Defendant also relies on several cases in which courts have found a furnisher’s
investigation reasonable when the furnisher reviewed the ACDV and compared the disputed
information to its internal account records.50 But in those cases, the dispute information
transmitted through the ACDVs did not include documentary materials that conflicted with the
furnisher’s records or otherwise supplied a concrete reason to question the reliability of the
information on file.
Defendant further relies on Hampton v. Barclays Bank Delaware.51 There, the court
found that the furnisher conducted a reasonable investigation by reviewing each ACDV it
received, including dispute codes and any attached document images, and comparing the
disputed information against its underlying loan records and verification materials to confirm the
ACDV matched the furnisher’s records.52 And when the plaintiff specifically alleged identity
fraud in two disputes, the furnisher took additional steps to verify the loan at issue, including
confirming that the IP address associated with the loan application geolocated to the plaintiff’s
location, that the income-verification documents came from the plaintiff’s actual employer, that
50 Collins v. Diversified Consultants, Inc., No. 15-CV-02115-RBJ-NYW, 2016 WL 11693446, at *5–6 (D.
Colo. July 19, 2016), adopted by Collins v. Diversified Consultants, Inc., No. 15-CV-2115-RBJ-NYW, 2017 WL
971528 (D. Colo. Mar. 13, 2017) (finding the furnisher’s investigation reasonable where it reviewed the ACDV,
confirmed the consumer’s identifying information, and compared the disputed debt to its internal account records,
despite not contacting the original creditor, because the plaintiff offered no evidence he did not owe the debt or that
the reported amount was wrong); Stewart v. Equifax Info. Servs., LLC, 320 F. Supp. 3d 1186, 1204–06 (D. Kan.
2018) (finding the furnisher’s investigation reasonable where it reviewed the ACDV and its account records and
verified plaintiff’s authorized-user status to the CRA even though the ACDV was coded “not his/her account,”
because the ACDV included no fraud or identity-theft code, no supporting documents, and no indication that
plaintiff disputed her authorized-user status).
51 478 F. Supp. 3d 1113 (D. Kan. 2020).
52 Id. at 1138.
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calls relating to the account originated from the phone number on file, and that the voices on
recorded calls about the account were the same.53 Based on this information, the furnisher
maintained that the disputes did not give it reason to doubt the accuracy of its records, and the
court agreed.54
Again, this case is different. Here, White’s confirmation email, which was attached to
the ACDVs, gave Rent Recovery reason to doubt the accuracy of the records on which it relied
to verify the debt. Yet Rent Recovery took no additional steps to address that conflict. And
unlike in Hampton, where the furnisher corroborated the loan information through additional
investigative steps, Rent Recovery conducted no follow-up to reconcile the inconsistency
presented by the ACDV materials. Instead, it verified the account without contacting Montane to
address the conflict or determine why Montane’s records did not reflect the payment that White
confirmed Montane had received.
Accordingly, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have met their burden of establishing that
Defendant’s investigation was unreasonable “beyond question.”55 The uncontroverted record
shows that, after receiving Plaintiffs’ ACDVs containing White’s confirmation email, Defendant
verified the account as accurate without taking any steps to reconcile White’s confirmation with
Montane’s prior communications reflected in Defendant’s notes. On this record, and in light of
the authorities discussed above, no reasonable jury could conclude that Defendant conducted a
reasonable investigation under § 1681s-2(b). Plaintiffs’ motion for partial summary judgment on
liability is therefore granted. Because Plaintiffs are entitled to summary judgment on liability,
53 Id. at 1139.
54 Id.
55 Maiteki v. Marten Transp. Ltd., 828 F.3d 1272, 1275 (10th Cir. 2016) (quoting Westra v. Credit Control
of Pinellas, 409 F.3d 825, 827 (7th Cir. 2005)).
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and because Defendant’s motion for summary judgment is based solely on its contention that its
investigation was reasonable, Defendant’s motion for summary judgment is denied.
II. Rent Recovery’s Motion to Exclude Expert Testimony
Rent Recovery has also filed a Daubert motion challenging Plaintiffs’ designated expert,
Douglas Hollon, who is offered primarily to provide opinion testimony regarding the adequacy
of Rent Recovery’s policies and procedures for investigating consumer disputes and the
reasonableness of Rent Recovery’s investigation into Plaintiffs’ credit reporting disputes.
Because the Court resolves the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment and grants
Plaintiffs summary judgment on liability without relying on Hollon’s proposed testimony, Rent
Recovery’s Daubert motion is denied as moot.
IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED BY THE COURT that Rent Recovery’s Motion for
Summary Judgment (Doc. 79) is denied, and Plaintiffs’ Motion for Partial Summary Judgment
(Doc. 85) is granted.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Rent Recovery’s Motion to Exclude Expert
Testimony and Report (Doc. 83) is denied as moot.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
Dated: February 25, 2026
S/ Julie A. Robinson
JULIE A. ROBINSON
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
Case 5:24-cv-04043-JAR Document 103 Filed 02/25/26 Page 17 of 17