have st from mr brown thank you please the court the identity of a creditor in other words who owns the debt of the creditor side is a straightforward question of fact if the purported creditor is an a for the original creditor and all of the purported creditors of these consolidated cases claim to be asked all it takes to demonstrate ownership is at a site in agreement and the only requirement for what to review and assignment agreement is the ability to read that that was not the dispute that the consumers made the consumers didn't say oh there is an assignment but it's void or defective or legally invalid because they said didn't get that far right that they said there was no assignment so yes the question of the validity it force ability of an aside that is a legal question but the mere existence of an assignment is a simple question of fact so again it's a simple task obtaining a single document at reviewing its contents and that's well within the capabilities ownership information yeah the architecture is that the there was no assignment and that the debts are held by the original creditors at so there should not be collection agencies or debt buyers like calvary or midland yeah the essentially somebody is reporting that hey this consumer owes money at our position it is case what's your injury are you injured by just having the i think of the owners of the debt on your credit report what their collection agencies are debt fires yes because a debt that looks like a city banked at a rigid unofficial creditor is one thing but it's pretty well established that the mere presence of collection agencies or debt collectors on a consumer's credit report materially injures their credit reputation this runs of the a policy position that whether or not legal requirements of an assignment are matt is a issue that the credit reporting agencies can resolve you know no we're just talking about a simple bare question of fact is there some documentation that evidence is the existence of the assignment we're not looking for the for the credit bureaus to explore you know plumb the depths of the legal validity of the assignment at again these disputes are not saying they claim an assignment occurred but we think that it was defective at subway where sake they claim an assignment occurred but no was cited ever occurred at there's no documentation of any kind that supports their claim that an assignment assigned to you and the company said yes it was assigned and i did so i take it your complaint isn't really that it wasn't verified it was verified most of the time that it wasn't verified with documentation behind it which is where i wonder if we're starting down the slippery slope with the documentation that sort of veering into into what i consider to be a separate question which is the reasonable this of the investigation that was undertaken but the position of the leaves of the decisions by the district court don't speak to the reasonable this of the investigation their position at those decisions are that no investigation of any kind was required because you only would you not mr brown that in this world of you know fair credit reporting act and all these other have a certain role and i'm just not sure where this documentation requirement that you're focusing on comes from what the reason why i talk about documentation so much is because i think that that highlights why this is a factual inaccuracy issue as opposed to a legal challenge the ones that have documentation though they have legal that is legal ramifications or factual run for cations how one reads a contract how one reads an assignment determination that requires a legal analysis or an adjudication they're looking at a document that said ok you know the year is such that you are over the age of twenty one dollars if you come on it it's a really simple factual determination so if you think you want it under your argument if documentation is provided let's say it's provided and not signed or provided and not clear is that sufficient well i think that we're getting into that whether the the investigation was reasonable or not and i think that the reasonable this question is going to be you know require a lot of discovery if we're going to understand the cirrhotic facts and circumstances to determine whether the investigation was reasonable or not but we're still stuck at the threshold question in this case which is certain answer really winds up being a legal question is there a principle agent relationship between people is there an asinine or asked any relationship is there a buyer seller relationship as in the debt collection world sometimes people just sell portfolios of debt for a certain amount of money and yes there are facts that would feed into that legal determination but whether the relationship is as an or as or any of the others i mentioned is a legal determination well it's so again that the belatedly of the of the underlying documents is a legal determination but their existence is that relationship and it's why would why what's the point of having the documents if not right that they're asking the credit bureaus to make you know a quote unquote legal determination regarding their obligation on the underlying debt and in order to do that you know they have to the credit bureau has to dig up paperwork maybe a signed contract or charge slip says the court in the murphy case noted but the credit bureaus if it if they're briefing that that determination is an unequivocal fact issue so with the shoes on the other foot at the consumer says hey i don't owe them money i don't know who this person is i don't get why they're appearing on my credit report that's also challenging a factual inaccuracy the same way as if it was factual inaccuracy you know if there's a debt or an alleged debt or you know named joe are smith and you know a fairly common name and they get some other joe arsonists information he can say you know you got the wrong guy you know as a factual matter i'm not the one who took out this debt has nothing to do with what the de is valid or invalid or is signed or not and signed it's just a question of fact what the same is true for the ownership question and this court has already made this determination of the capital case the existence of an assignment was held to be a pure question of fact that's where there was a least your opponent suggests that there's a can tax tool element that we can't overlook here well that they can textual element can't be who is the reviewer to the  identity of the reviewer cannot be the context that the term is whether something is a fact issue or a legal issue that the context is you know the facts and circumstances surrounding the particular issue here and here again we're talking about an assignment it will be evidence by documentation does that documentation exist yes or no it's an extraordinarily simple factual it query and for the credit bureaus to claim that it's beyond their competence simply doesn't hold water but it's not simple if it's contested and if it's not identity of the ask me and account number or some other unique identifier for the debt that question if those three things line up i think that you've conducted a reasonable investigation but if you don't even bother to obtain the agreement you say i'm not going to do anything to look into this at all that's obviously insufficient but that's what the credit bureaus are claiming their responsibility is to do absolutely nothing i see that i've got about five minutes left and i'd like to reserve the rest of my time for a bottle thank you tha the full name of the consumer you know for an address and so on now in some case that might require the c r a to look at a credit application or even a credit card statement right but once you go beyond that simple factual inquiry and it ordinary consumers supposed to know the difference between a legal and a factual questions as people go to law school for three years and here we all are you know many years later in a courtroom talking about that because you know under if it's a legal matter then you need to go to a proper tribunals probably a court and resolve whatever you know the ownership question is or whatever the legal issue might be perhaps  an affirmative defense but can can ordinary people really do this and just the fair credit reporting act put the burden on them at the risk of not being able to contest let's say the legitimacy  the legal aspect of what they did not the result of that investigation was a communication from each they are a few of the consumers in writing explaining what they did who they contacted what was their find and follow what steps  credit reporting industry that was one of the animating principles that motivated the court's decision in the denon case talking about this sort of allocation of risk in the assumption of risk that creditors when they report debts or in this case debt buyers take on when they you know agreed to take on a body of debt and report them to the credit bureaus it's well recognized that the credit reporting agencies are rd parties to the information that they obtain in reports and accordingly their role in resolv disputes is more limited as the government case the th circuit recognized generally their role is to simply notify the furnishers of the furnishers can conduct their own re investigation in this case i think the allegations you know bear that out and make a lot of sense in that context that here calvary or midland the death byers at issue you took on assignments of deaths reported them in some cases sued the consumers in state court to enforce the debts and clearly  st circuit characterize those amendments as closing the liability gap in the chain case the issue here really in appellate appellants briefs sort of suggested they would have no recourse but when you look at the allegations i mean they're charging the debt buyers outright fraud and they do have recourse both in a common law fraud action or even under the f c r a after the c r a is have contacted the data furnishers and asked them to investigate and they responded back verifying debt is reportable that the reporting is accurate there's liability for those furnishers under sixty one dollars s two so the notion that the consumers have no recourse simply isn't borne out by the structure of the fair credit reporting act and is it borne out by the other decisions that motivated the denon decision and that are not in line with it i also wanted to point out that appellant's reliance on capital i think as we point out our briefs there is a context there and that context actually is telling in this instance encamped all the court held that the intention in an assignment under illinois law could be a question of fact for the fact of course the fair credit reporting act doesn't require let alone empower the consumer reporting agencies to impanel juries or many arbitrations to find fact on whether or not an assignment was valid whether it's properly memorialized whether the underlying contract requires the assignment to be are not fact questions in the sense that term is usually used in credit reporting cases decisions brought up this notion of who was responsible for determining legal liability it was decided before the one thousand nine hundred and six amendments were enacted that it sort of more clearly defined and delineate what congress expected of the various entities in the credit reporting industry and you know ultimately when that case went to trial the jury did find for experience so the decision there i think is not really on all fours with that i'm happy to see the rest of my time or answer any questions the yes thank you your honor i think as i mentioned before i think it's important to kind of just zoom out and put ourselves in the shoes of a consumer who's looking at their credit report and they see an unfamiliar debt collection company who they've never done business with and they believe that this information is not correct they reach out to the credit bureaus and say hey i don't owe this person any money this is not the person that i owe you know i did not have a debt with this person the decision of the district court and the position of the c r a is today is that the c r rays do not have to conduct any investigation now they've argued that they did conduct an investigation and they've made a bunch of arguments about what the extent of that investigation must be in order to be considered reasonable under the fair credit reporting act but that's not the issue before the courts dave the issue before the court is whether that claim by the consumer even triggers an obligation of any kind by the credit reporting agencies to conduct an investigation and i think the answer obviously is that that is a factual inaccuracy that the consumer is claiming and the c r rays are required to conduct an investigation regarding that factual inaccuracy now so it's you a question mr brown this is a little bit as a political here because that involved a legal challenge to the force ability or validity of the underlying debt and the c r a is even just a horse given that several of the district courts relied on it too because i think the district court's recent was fundamentally misguided but that's what you put in your bruce i mean the district you are asking us to review the district courts the district courts felt that there was guidance from to be had obviously no two cases are  identical and you left us pretty much at sea about why you don't agree with that well i mean i think i spent most of the brief explaining that this is not a legal challenge to the validity of force ability of the debt but is instead a challenge to the factual accuracy of the claimed owner of the day and so i don't think that not is on all fours with respect to the the arguments of this case because again the c r a is quite effectively at the district court level convince the court that this is about a legal challenge about the validity or enforceability of the underlying debt or the claim to sign it and i think it's important to reframe the question as the existence of the assignment and again that goes back to the consumer looking at their credit report you not that i'm aware of i think this this is a novel issue as far as my research is concerned except as it relates to the consumer side of the ownership question that is pretty well settled not withstanding you know applebee's argument to the image you're saying hey this debt is not mine and in order to conduct an investigation they dig up some paperwork that they talk to the credit bureau and they see if everything lines up or there are the data for sure and see if everything lines up and it's the same here  conducted but the district courts at the credit bureaus today said they do not have to conduct an investigation i get the reasonable this of the investigation that is conducted is a separate question the question is do they have an obligation to conduct any investigation of any kind the district courts of the credit bureau say no and i'm here because i think that that's the wrong answer i think yes they must conduct at least some investigation and the reasonableness of that investigation will depend on the facts and circumstances of the case you know here if the disputes the consumer said hey these these people are not trustworthy they routinely break federal law and the established case law in this circuit is that if the consumer alerts the credit bureau to the fact that the furniture is untrustworthy that simply relying on the furnishers word is insufficient but again we have the threshold question of whether any investigation is required i see that my time is expired thank you very much thanks to all counsel we will take the case und