Case ID: f-appx_671/html/0766-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "PER CURIAM:", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Elaine MARSHALL, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Frederick J. HANNA and Associates, P.C., Defendant-Appellee.
    No. 15-15417
    United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.
    Date Filed: 12/16/2016
    
      David Neal McDevitt, Thompson Consumer Law Group, Mesa, AZ, Marques J. Carter, Law Office of Marques J. Carter, LLC, Douglasville, GA, for Plaintiff-Appellant
    Michael Kevin Chapman, John Henry Bedard, Jr., David A. Kleber, Bedard Law Group, PC, Duluth, GA, for Defendant-Appellee
    Before WILLIAM PRYOR and ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judges, and MARTINEZ, District Judge.
    
      
       Honorable Jose E. Martinez, United States District Judge for the Southern District of Florida, sitting by designation.
    
   PER CURIAM:

The only issue in this appeal is whether the venue provision of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1692i(a)(2), applies to garnishment proceedings under Georgia law. That issue is controlled by recent binding precedent. See Ray v. McCullough Payne & Haan, 838 F.3d 1107 (11th Cir. 2016). The venue provision of the Act requires “[a]ny debt collector who brings any legal action on a debt against any consumer” to “bring such action only in the judicial district ... in which such consumer signed the contract sued upon; or in which such consumer resides at the commencement of the action.” 15 U.S.C. § 1629i(a)(2). We held in Ray that the provision does not apply to garnishment proceedings brought under Georgia law because those proceedings are “fundamentally an action against the garnishee, not the consumer.” Ray, at 1111. Frederick J. Hanna and Associates obtained a judgment against Elaine Marshall and then filed a garnishment action in Georgia against her employer. Because this garnishment proceeding was against the garnishee, Marshall’s employer, and not the consumer, Marshall, the venue provision of the Act does not apply.

We AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.