yes good morning our final case for today is roni against medical business bureau and oh that's all right no problem if you need a minute i thought i went to take  upon the way the creditors treated the debt and also the relationship between the debtor and the creditor i think the creditor is in the best position to determine the nature of the debt just as you know  applicable regulations as the consumer protection consumer finance protection bureau or its predecessors issued any regulations about those not to my knowledge your honor and i haven't uncovered anything in my research  regulation there's no regulation but what i wondered i mean i guess i was trying to come at this from the point of view of what your client's real concern seems to be and it seems to be the identification of the commission and the consumer finance protection bureau have had something to say about that and then i wondered if you were filing in bankruptcy would you issue something saying that you know open account or a closed account so if i go to macy's and i buy a suit and then i decide to buy a pair of shoes that's one debt that i have with macy's not to that but do you have anything concrete to hang on to character amount or legal status correct and the district court focused on the term character relation to this particular hits like the word the upstanding debt difficulty seeing that the character of the debt is the same thing you know the number of transactions right right right now many completely are i think the difficult part is that it does come into a factual issue of you know well what kind of that is it and i think that the evidence before the district court here you know we saw how the creditor itself treated the debt which you know the way that the creditor transmitted the party's cross motions for summary judgment however i did we did we did argue that you know we were relying on you know the information provided to us and there was really no way for a medical business bureau to determine that this particular debt was they related to one course of treatment or dealt with a single injury none of that information was in the medical care business bureau's possession at the time of the credit reporting so which also makes it difficult because you know where exactly do we draw the line on what the debt collector supposed to determine in terms of the character of the debt is that really actually making that determination i  it shouldn't be up to them to then decide well even though we don't have all the information we're just going to consolidate those that shouldn't be a choice that they're going to make let me ask you a somewhat different question one of the things that your opponent know on this record it's not clear that ms rowan actually suffered any injury attributable to this reporting is that relevant irrelevant i mean i don't know what her credit rating was before she started having do treatments at the illinois bone and joint institute what it is after whether she's right i mean i guess she has this allegation about a car that she can't be financed so the only evidence in the wrapper i wouldn't call it evidence  point on the statutory damages issue and we don't feel like that the court considered any of the factors in determining to issue that one thousand dollar and word and and refer to it as the minimal amount as opposed to the statutory maximum  and failed to put any of those it's decision on the record regarding the issue of that damages and we think that point alone was in error but that wouldn't be that wouldn't deprive her of a claim it would just require re further proceedings on the damages corrector on it it's just seems so silly to me to think that that every time a unique transaction number gets put on a bill you have a different relationship that she had i mean was it an open account or was it not an open an account and how is that determined and i think it's determined by the relationship between the creditor and the debtor and what they agreed to and what the the history was of the transactions but suppose this i'm going know not making the payments that you're supposed to or these all get lined up is different debt you know different accounts so she has millions of different accounts with macy's if if that's the way that the creditor treats but i think that it doesn't really i mean so in bankruptcy then you'd have pages upon pages  processing was was there any argument in the record based on how the insurer handled these debts and looks like the insurer it looks to me maybe wrong like the insurer treated them as separate debts because it state co pay to each one rather than applying a co pay to the total and that's exactly what happened and that's how that was there an argument the district was there an argument about the effect of the insurers behavior all the facts in the record point to this being a single account and a single account should be reported as a single they're able to tell so i have i want to come back to this question about what is the character that i could certainly understand regulatory argument that all the songs due to a particular creditor should be aggregated in the bottom line report the question is whether that is required by the word character of what what's your understanding of the meaning of that word well i think that really get the meaning from i think the meaning of that word is going to be context and and the context here is credit reporting and specifically credit reporting multiple trade lines versus one trade line and where do we get the meaning of the word character well and again i think that the term character is going to be context dependent entirely so what is the character of the debt is going to depend on the facts and circumstances surrounding oh no we're not playing lucy goosey where it doesn't have any meaning at all it has to have some meaning right character is followed immediately by the word a mile right there's no doubt i gather that the defendant was and i'm not asking you to maybe this is just wonderful but i'm asking where we get the meaning of a term i'm not asking you to say let's just dispense with the inquiry and apply the equity of this case that it's a term with legal meaning and i'm trying to figure out where the meaning comes from what the character has a plain ordinary meaning oh i just did i mean i think that that's news to me too i mean judges so the question is you know one creditor and you've rolled up a lot of obligations i'll use a different word to that creditor then what do you have and there's actually nothing false per se about what the bill said there were no one disagreed about the yellen disagreed about how much money was left over after the insurance company paid its sha there's something else that's disputed and i don't know that that's the legal relationship between the debtor in the creditor that sounds more like legal status actually whether it's a debt i had been with whether it it's why the response look at all the facts and circumstances cope with the problem well i think that whether a debt is a single account or multiple accounts is part of the that from a different perspective do you agree that the insurer perceived nine transactions rather than warning i believe nine claims not i think playing nine insurance claims but i don't think compels credit bureau to deal with transactions differently from the way the insurer deals with well i think the character is going to speak to those that the course is dealing between the creditor and the debtor is going to speak to whether there are multiple accounts or a singular account is going to be the overall picture of what this obligation is so on we give you a different situation which i have some experience with suppose you go to that northwestern hospital and you decide to have your hip replaced and you know they will give you a lot you owe a lot of money to northwestern hospital and various claims get submitted to the insurance company some of them are for you know nursing services some of them are for anesthesiology the room i don't mean a doctor that's a whole different bill but you just have this one creditor your your notion seems to be that the character straight line which is a different word of course but you could say maybe character and straight line i don't know trade line information goods names of companies where the applicant has accounts counts or opened credit limits types of the council sorts of things like that that at least factual information you can get your hands around i don't know if it were solves this question about whether we have nine different deaths in which case there's nothing false about what medical business percentage or whether it means there's just one where there were nine different invoices but was it was all for one account and the miscarriage or money number they had separate invoice numbers separate  be determined by the course of dealing between the creditor and the debtor and the course of dealing here was an ongoing relationship where she saw additional services even without covering her past expenses i know she had some kind of medical condition that required her to go there once every six months and got a separate bill just exactly like these pills except they were six months apart instead of a matter of days what if the creditor consolidated it into a single account statement and all those bills were included on the single account statement then you have a single account and the misc characterization was taking a single account but splitting it up into nine separate much go to go to our auto dealer you two car here's a purse car and don't pay for either warm necessary to report the aggregate work and or credit your report the total do for each car i would depend on the nature of the transaction if there's two separate is there any way the credit bureau can know what it's supposed to do it's under the argument developing it's damned if you do and damned if you don't if you add them together and they were supposed to be separated depending on the nature of each transaction you're liable if you don't add them together depending on the nature of the resurrection you're liable right i can imagine a regulation say to do it one way or do with the other but let's any cases directly on this issue despite a fair amount of research i'm sure by the other side of the issue here i didn't see it but did the obligation is to report the information truthfully and accurately credit reporting it's voluntary well there isn't know accuracy errors there were in fact nine visits the amount due for each visit is in fact sixty dollars and the total is five forty that's that's why you're relying on character rather than a m doesn't want to look like she's left lots of creditors in the lurch when she i'll be generous i say it's really just this creditor these nine actually you know that's not true but never mind that the that that the number of creditors that are showing up on your experience report would have an impact on your credit score except it's a common sense fact to me think you need evidence that there isn't any evidence that record for all i know for credit rating was so bad before she did this that the fact that this happened was neither here nor there that maybe that doesn't matter either but i really am not sure that the  undying transactions in her case have changed the character of her obligation what misreported the character of the obligations again there was a single account but they made it look like there were nine accounts that made it look like she had opened up nine separate cut its credit cards were taken out nine separate harlem's when really that was a single course of treatment over thirty one days for a single injury arising from a single prescription from the doctor so she went and saw you know the physical therapist for the single course of treatment nine times but it was one account and they split up that account into nine separate straight lines to make it look like she'd opened up nine different accounts they split it up because the insurance co strategies are saying because the insurance company treatment with the same creditor if they all have a very similar character even though they occurred on different dates but the issue is not you know whether these debts have the same character the issue is whether it was appropriate for the debt collector to report nine separate dose that matter to the meaning of a statutory term because how experian the fines it is how you are broadcasting to the world what the nature of this debt is and so if you're broadcasting to the world that the nature of this debt is nine separate account when in fact it is only one account then you have mis characterizing the nature of the debt to the detriment of the consumers now whether the consumer credit score was increased or decreased by the reporting of this debts i don't believe there's evidence on the record to support it one way or the other but obviously any entity that's reviewing this consumer's consumer report to determine their quote or credit worthiness is going to see a whole page full of collection accounts separate trade line stuff really reported trade it makes it look like they a money all over town makes it look like a that there are deadbeat who doesn't pay their debts who keeps on opening up accounts and refusing to pay or struggling financially it makes them look look less credit worthy than if there was just a single trade line that's disputed by the way creditor so i just want to point that out one last time also each of these separate debts had different dates of delinquency and when there's different dates delinquency as determined by the creditor that has a lot to do with one our ability  what we're supposed to report under the fair credit reporting act which states that we have to report by the month in the year and in this particular case one of those that's well it of them were in january one was in february