question that the court needs to answer today and that question is whether an individual consumer who is unable to grow a business because of information that was reported on that consumers credit report in violation of the fair credit reporting act is entitled to recover the damages the actual damages the fact consumer can establish and that consumer suffered i will recognize i will begin by recognizing that there is a lot of language in some cases out there that says that if a consumer credit report is used for business purposes that takes it out of the purview of the fair credit reporting act what's missing from those cases though the points that i would like to make is that first none of those cases are ninth circuit cases but more importantly what's missing from those cases is any analysis that really supports that conclusion and i think the place that we need to start is in the language of the statute itself the fair credit reporting act under this is fifteen u s c section sixteen eighty one zero says that any person who violates the fair credit reporting act is liable to end it to the consumer for any actual damages that that consumer suffers there's no language in the statute that says unless those damages somehow relate to a business transaction that the that the consumer conducts and similarly in sixteen eighty one eight which is where which is where the consumer credit report itself is to find there's no language in that statute that says the consumer credit report that looks and smells and otherwise is a consumer credit report no longer becomes a consumer credit report just because it's used for business he's responsible to the extent to which we can say they investigated rice is part of the case your suit generally kristie against u s bank is for failing to do an adequate investigation is required under the fair debt collection practices act is that god have that right yes and also though for failing to remove the information from his credit report when that investigation whatever investigation it did do did not verify the information was being reported correct that it failed to remove the information that it could not verify it all gets a little bit complicated because the news is correct he tries to he tries to purchase a forklift so let me walk through exactly what happened that if i can your honor let me walk through exactly what happened there so plaintiff goes in under the name of his bit new business and attempts to stanton went back to the lender and said we'd like you to review this one by hand because often when you do that we find out that you end up approving the credit the the lender asked the business for plaintiff social security the business gave the lender a plan of social security number the lender then took that social security number and went to trans union one of the credit reporting agencies who's now settled in the case and said let us know about plaintiffs credit trans union gave that lender plaintiff standard consumer credit report the same consumer credit report that someone would receive if plaintiff went down to an auto dealership to buy a car and then the lender looked at that consumer credit report and noticed this black mark that was plaintiff understood as he was building this business from scratch that he would need to rely on his personal credit worthiness as an individual consumer to grow that business the way he had with the initial business that he had grown quite successfully  which is not uncommon and is is almost the same thing that the plaintiff in the in the case of dennis versus b h one wanted to do he wanted to use his personal credit in order to grow that business this transaction lead plaintiff know that he was not going to be able to do that because of this disputed information that was still on his credit report record correct this business is an l l c not you know going trying to open up a coffee shop  that's not right no personally corrected correct that's right so he was but but he also knew that even though this business which is a separate l l c until that business got big enough to borrow money on its own that he would need to rely on his personal credit to do that that was his hope and his desire was to grow that business using his personal credit until it could get to the point where that business could then operate and so on credit  all of the protections of the record reporting act go away where the definition of a consumer report though is found is in fifteen u s c sixteen eighty one a and what that statute says it defines what is a consumer credit report and what it says is that a consumer credit report is any information or a report that is a either used or expected to be used for consumer purposes or be it contains information that was collected in whole or in part for the purpose of establishing consumer credit and so the question then is the consumer credit report the trans union handed this lender based on plan of social security number to determine whether it was going to make a loan to the business is a consumer credit report and plaintiff would submit that it absolutely is because at the time the trans union handed that report to the lender trans union had  expectation that it was a concern that it was being used for consumer credit for consumer purposes because it was used for business purposes the trans union didn't know that there is no evidence anywhere in the record that would suggest that when trans union handed that ordinary consumer credit report the same one it would give to a car dealer or a mortgage lender or anybody else that it was that that that the business that it was handing it to was going to use that for a business transaction rather than a personal is a personal purpose for using your for using your credit well and i would argue that's not the case in part because that's exactly what happened in venice and this is this court in dentist said that the plaintiff could recover the damages that that he that he incurred as a result of not being able to use his personal credit to grow the business and i would also submit that it's consistent with the look with the plain language with set which says that if the consumer if the report is used for personal family or household purposes then it's a consumer credit report the personal desire to grow your own or completely understood but again looking at the definition of what a consumer report is trans union didn't know that it was that it was that this consumer credit report was being used by a forklift and the other part of the statute says that if the information was quote collected or whole in whole or in part for the purpose of serving as a factor of establishing a consumer's credit then it's a consumer credit report there's no question here that u s bank provided this information to trans union for this very purpose that the information that the disputed information that's that issue here was information that was collected for the purpose of establishing consumer credit therefore that information is part of the consumer credit report a consumer credit report due to a violation of the fair credit reporting act lead to actual damages that my client incurred and my client's position that he should be entitled to recover those damages so yes let me do that thank you the court co host lee for us bank accounts hold talks about getting to the language of the statute in that regard i want to point out that the dentist and warming cases they don't talk about the language of the statute this business issue was not briefed it wasn't discussed and i are there are those decisions both of those decisions involved true consumer purchases both of them involved in the plaintiff's residence in the one instance it was the plaintiff having to ultimately pay a higher security deposit on their rental residence in the gorman case and you can only really get it if you read the briefs in carmen but it was they had to pay a higher mortgage on their residence so those cases both actually involve consumer damages a consumer purpose dentist also involved this business purpose he wanted to start his own business but he did it all in his own name it was his ability to obtain credit not a compan s also contrast dennis with the fifth circuit cerise in decision back iraq where it was an individual who wanted to buy an investment real estate property and they couldn't get it because of information on their credit report their personal credit report and the court rejected the claim saying that's outside it the credit report was both used and expected to be used for a business purpose here that same thing is true as well this credit report was both used and expected to be used for a business purpose i think the best i can understand his argument is that at the outset it might have been but that somehow by the time we got the transfer of requests that it became a little bit attenuated so the bank or it's related in that is didn't know that it was for business and therefore they were using a consumer's report in the consumer context i think that's what he's saying that you kind of getting out here and we don't know about the forklift over here citi could you respond to that yeah so there's there's two separate matters u s bank was not involved with this forklift acquisition attempted forklift acquisition us bank was involved in a totally different credit that was a different business and us bank had reported the information to the c r a is about that and then when miranda holmes this business goes and tries to buy a forklift they go to try to get financing and this is all in docket one ninety nine exhibits one hundred acre declaration exhibit c is all the stuff related to this attempted acquisition of the forklift and it shows very clearly it was a business that was applying for the credit and there was a commercial credit report run on the business the business had never had any real activity so it's not good enough to get the credit and then the home company just bought the forklift right it did ultimately i just bought a check and bought the four clouts exactly right yes and so it was the financing of the company i was attempting to you know the people who want to get the money because they want to sell the forklift they're saying finance or you know why don't you try running this by hand get his personal credit report the business owners and so they get that but again it's all in the context of pine a forklift for miranda holmes and there is to the theory that there's an absence of as evidence as to what trans union was thinking when it provided that credit report the plaintiff is the plaintiff here they have the burden of proof they need to prove that this is a consumer report an absence of evidence goes against them moreover this corps in mehndi and the fifth circuit recently in her says it does not matter if the reported issue could have been used for a consumer purpose you need to show that it was going to be used for a consumer purpose here there's only a business purpose at issue no one was ever it's contrast this with komo this court's prior decision where the person pulling the report says i'm going to be using this for employment purposes which is a type of consumer purpose and the c r a provides the report and then it's ultimately used for a different purpose and the this court says no that's a consumer report because the c r a was expecting it to be used for a consumer purpose so it's actual or expected use here though both actual and expected use our business uses and that is  information with the intention that this will be used for consumer purposes if the in this case the bank is not negligent in not knowing that there is no violation of the c r a either so wonder mehndi a rocket apollo even go in focusing on this collection aspect of the definition of a consumer report us bank prevails in this case this is a really important issue because this council pointed out new businesses never have enough history to get credit on their own they always are relying on their owners as personal credit and so these credit reports are pulled all the time throughout the country every single day and if this is always a consumer report every single time then the only way that the that this can be proper is if the owner gives a written consent to the use of their credit report every single time that's not required when you go to try to buy a t v or any other consumer good but it would be required all of a sudden every time a business owner wants to buy a put in for their business  and again that a ruling in plaintiff's favor here would create a circuit split with the baccarat case in particular but also the seventh and eighth circuits complain job any credit report is pulled as part of that his denied the employment because of that he loses wages as an gorman one of the allegations that was lost wages that's consumer damages and that would be a consumer report because employment is a type of sort of consumer purpose but here you have and there's to this business versus consumer dichotomy comes in in two places one is in the definition of a consumer report and that is sixteen eighty one s the other and equally important place this business consumer dichotomy comes into play is in section sixteen anyone in and oh because they talk about how you need to prove actual damage sustained by a consumer they don't just say sustained by an individual and i know consumers define to be an individual but this is a this is a consumer statute the legislative history is very clear they didn't want to provide any benefit for businesses or business purposes or business damages they want to protect consumers and so when you have as a separate matter regardless of whether it was a consumer report or not if you have business damages and here the damages are i had to loan money to my business that is not damage sustained in a consumer capacity lost wages is a different matter but but lost business profits or or out of pocket to fund my business that's not consumer damages under the statute so that's a separate basis where this dichotomy comes into play and it's non recoverable business damages then of course evidence relating to the damages can be stricken from the case and that's exactly what happened here so that the evidentiary all those this comes up in a sort of unusual posture the evidentiary ruling is proper if the underlying rationale is correct and it is in this  because he was spending time clearing up an issue on his on his consumer report if the court reads that that decision it's very clear in there that that attorney had his own law firm and so that attorney build his time through that law firm and his lost wages are essentially the same thing as the lost profits of that law firm there was no reason for this could the for the circuit court in that gorman case to look at the language and say language of the fair credit reporting act and say he can recover those because in fact it was run through the business and it and that's kind of that's the problem that i have with the interpretations of the fair credit reporting act that are being proffered here looking at the baccarat case for example for the fifth circuit the denial of credit in that case there was that issue in that case was that the plaintiff wanted to get credit to buy the house that abutted her house so it was essentially the house right next door there the court concluded that the plaintiff could not recover for those damages because her intention was to buy that house to rent it out to make business income and therefore the court the fifth circuit in that case concluded that it was a business purpose that wasn't protected by the fair credit reporting act but under that same logic if plaintiff went down to the porsche dealer to buy a porsche and was denied credit because of a violation of the fair credit reporting act the court would then need to analyze whether the plaintiff was buying that car because she liked horses or because she thought that it might appreciate at some point in time which would then turn it into somehow a business purpose and automatically create a shield for anyone who had violated the fair credit reporting act with and led to that denial of credit another point that tractor the business bought the tractor in fact what happened is that plaintiff personally had to lend money to the business for that business to go buy the tractor so that and that loan was ultimately not repaid when that business went under and so this was a direct actual damage the plaintiff suffered as a result of the inability to obtain credit and ability of the company the inability of the company to kept pouring money and in general because he figured they weren't going to be getting any credit right so he kept putting money into the crack because the business in part because of a blemish on his personal consumer credit report was unable to obtain credit he was forced then to lend the money to the business until the point that he decided the business was no longer viable and when he was personally not repaid thank you and i'm out of time