good morning on the police of the court my name is dennis mccarty i'm here to represent the appellant's in this case this is a fair credit reporting act case on the appellant's argue today that equifax and chase bank are and were reporting negative and derogatory information on the appellant's credit reports that do not belong to them the accounts in question today are authorized user accounts authorized users are not contractually obligated to the account and they're not financially obligated to pay the account an authorized user is added when a primary account holder simply calls the credit card issuer and request that a certain individual is added to the account there are not any credit checks on the authorized user the only thing the primary account holder is required to have is their name and address and once  the primary account holder contacts the credit card issuer and request that they be added the authorized users never even contact the actual credit card that is issued is sent to the primary  the issue today is that when they are added the trade line or the account that is being reported is mirrored onto the authorized users credit report the problem  the primary account holder misses payments has the account charged off because of missed payments or maxes out the card the authorized user is now held responsible and liable for their irresponsibility a lot of times at least in my experience with my practice the authorized users who can't even call and talk about the account i'm not saying it's one hundred percent i'd never say that because i was this is this in the  to call and discuss the issue that they won't talk to them because of that that is in the record so with the account being mirrored on to their credit report the only thing they can do is to dispute it saying you know i'm not responsible for this account i'd like to have it removed and a vast majority of the times they are experian is so sensitive to that that if the account is goes delinquent and they will will remove it upon dispute but some of them slip by slip through the cracks as i argue and they verify it and they continue to report the account they're incredibly inconsistent a majority of the time well i have the percentages of my experience in the record of disputing these over the last two years equifax has a policy of removing the that's the problem is it's almost random on from a deposition we did they they stated that it's an ac d c process they allow the data from the shirt to make that decision and i argued at length and in the brief that v system or at least parroting of information is a flawed system well one way to look at this mr mccarty is can for district judges all be wrong yes that is my argument actually your honor there were a number of these filed i had two decisions go my way there only goes where they are paralegals the credit card holders and all those cases i'm sorry ron was a paralegal of yours the credit card holder and all those cases as in the case that you argued before us last month my paralegal you don't even recognize mo i know click here i recognize you absolutely  so anyway with the argument is that the statute the case all that's involved including the fifth circuit rulings that these accounts just it they don't belong to him and if they want to report the account as an authorized user as i argue that's ok they can all they can report the account that it's an authorized user there's an easy solution don't report the derogatory information because they didn't miss the payment it's not theirs and they can't fix it if that with facts verifies the information after dispute there's nothing else they can do they're literally stuck with it and in some cases like bill moore in my argument she doesn't even know who it belongs to she's very elderly she's guessing it belonged to her deceased husband she thinks he probably if it is his added her before he died she didn't know anything about it and upon trying to get a home  this this was held you know against her and she couldn't get it removed we feel that we argued that it is false on and states that if they're going to report information that belongs to another human being onto a consumer's credit report that does not belong to them that's that's false on the face of the credit report and at the very minimum misleading if they want to report the authorized user we don't even have an issue with that it's it's the negative history the late payments the charge offs the maxed out cards that they didn't do that is at issue here because they're held responsible for it when they want to get loans of course the fact that they're an authorized user and therefore use the card they could be part of the reason for why the card was maxed out or why the card wasn't paid completely agreed and i have argued that that is an issue between the primary the authorized user is running up that card and that's a discussion the primary account holder of the authorized user needs to have not over a credit report reporting an account that the authorized user may not even know they have iran remained in the case and then the line was later dismissed and again we can check all of this but i thought you might have in mind how do we have jurisdiction in that case was the nodes who filed after both issue and even on filed a motion to dismiss based on a statue limitations issue right i i responded in one of the motion to dismiss on the statue limitations issue again stayed on and then once the longs noticed or saw or read that equifax is a motion was granted they filed one too but the but the judge in that case up and like i said you know the fact that another person's account is being reported on to a consumer that has no financial responsibility no contractual obligation and is highly possible including with film or might not even know it's there it's false on its face and as this circuit has ruled it could even be technically accurate but if it's so misleading that it could not that it did but that it could lead to negative credit decisions it's no longer accurate and i argue that it's both it's it's false because it's not theirs and even if they did make some of the charges they're not contractually liable for it and the bigger picture here is that as widespread as this is there are going to be a significant number of consumers that might not even know it's there because all that is needed is a name and address credit checks are not done authorized users are not contacted and this like i said this goes against the authorized users credit report and it directly affects their credit lending because an obviously if you have a derogatory remark for derogatory account history your credit score is going to be lowered if your card is maxed out it's going to be lowered and in some of these cases some of these balances were extraordinarily high and almost a guy it was his ex wife and she wouldn't let him off i don't know why i didn't get into the details but and they didn't speak so that may be part of the issue i know that there was there were some issues there that they were communicating but we disputed it and it would not get removed when it was an ex pat house and there can i'm not saying it was an awesome guy even though he did say there are some issues but sometimes when you that you're next for a reason there could be some hostility there maybe the ex doesn't want to let you off because they just don't like you anymore i mean there's a big picture of if if you need this removed since you're not responsible for it it shouldn't report as if you are responsible for and you miss those payments and you had that account charged off or you maxed out that card when in reality there's no recourse there now there is when their standard is maximum accuracy how if you have an account and you dispute the account as being inaccurate and there are multiple accounts that are identical in status type and everything else be an authorized users and they'll remove it one day for one account but they want the other there's no consistency there it's the credit report by by nature at that point would be inaccurate because it's on the basically how equifax deals that day i mean that's how large it is there's no rhyme or reason other than the data furniture instructs them to continue reporting it on and that is a serious flaw in the system because if a consumer were disputes that the date the equifax will go to the data for sure and if the data furnish or says we want to continue to report it will continue to report as in this and i had very had two very good illustrations of how inconsistent it is within my brief there's also a guy who had to account i'm sorry to authorize user accounts on his credit report us disputed both of them on the same letterhead sank language they removed one and they continued to report the other and in the johnson case which i cited here he had five of them disputed the other three i believe they removed two more and they and one remained in my numbers may be a hair off amount but it's within my brief of the step by step a dispute process and what was removed and what remained but it's it's something consistent that it's even on the same letter i did equifax is a big company i get city and chase are big companies you still have to expect accuracy number one and number two because if it was different letters maybe even different offices different months different years maybe somebody had a bad day or something or maybe it was just overlooked but on the same letter from the same office same day and and not others i don't think we've received a response to that yet in any of the briefs that i've read through the district courts to me as you know i've had a number of these cases judge the honorable judge was reasonable they'd have a reasonable duty to report accurately when the standard is maximum accuracy and there is a big difference in there and i do quote that case a couple times over the case on president that there's a difference a big difference between accurate and maximum accuracy you have time for a bottle like  reporting of derogatory information but the f c r a confers no right to be free from truthful derogatory or negative information on credit reports the of scenery provides a limited right of action against furnishers like chase for failing to conduct a reasonable investigation into a consumer's dispute to state a claim against the furniture under section six hundred eighty one as to be a plaintiff must first allege first some factual inaccuracy in the credit information that was furnished and second how an investigation different from the one the furniture conducted could have resulted in different information being furnished in other words the plaintiff has to show that there is something inaccurate or misleading about their credit report that would have been different if the furniture had only done what statutorily required of it the plaintiffs in this case fail to plead either of these elements and the district court's judgments can be affirmed on either independent ground first there's nothing inaccurate about the way plaintiff's authorized user accounts are being furnished here plaintiffs can see that they were indicate that these are being furnished as authorized user accounts plaintiffs don't allege that there's anything misleading about their presentation they don't allege that any creditor would mistake their authorized user trade lines to mean financial responsibility for the accounts but simply they don't allege anything and accurate or misleading about the way their account information is furnished plaintiff's instead contend that furnishing any negative information about an authorized user is categorically unlawful not because furnishing information about an user is inaccurate or misleading but because truthful information about not their eyes user might have a negative impact on their credit worthiness there is no authority for that position in fact it's contrary to legal requirements imposed on creditors credit opportunity act and regulation be moreover it's not an actionable proposition under the f c or a this statute is meant to protect consumers from inaccurate or misleading information not to protect them from true but negative information i played just wanted to not be authorized users they could have asked the creditor chase here to be removed from the accounts and then to have the accounts removed from their credit reports but they never did that in essence they want the pluses of being authorized users access to accounts for which  have no financial responsibility with none of the negatives but that's not the office of the c r a the second independent ground for firming the dismissal is that plaintiff's claims fail because there is no factual information chase might have uncovered in a different investigation that could have changed the outcome of plaintiff's dispute when a customer disputes a trade line by complaining to a credit reporting agency the furnishers obligation is is to consult a reasonably example information and verify the accuracy of what's being reported in every section six thousand nine hundred one as to be case the plaintiff needs to identify some factual artifact some additional factual information that would have been found by a different investigation and furnished to the credit reporting agency to make her credit report more accurate and less misleading that's not what plaintiffs purport to do here plaintiffs don't posit any additional information that could have been found nor any factual clarification that could have been offered to resolve their f c ery claim instead they want the information to be removed from their credit reports based on the legal argument that such information does not belong on their credit reports but as courts have routinely held furnitures cannot make that kind of legal determination they can resolve factual inaccuracies but not disputes about the whatever it is and that's that's right i confess i was not involved in the proceedings below but that's documentary up fifty one two and three in the fillmore case while we're on the subject still more i think it's important well may not be important but i do want to point out that the the allegations about ms feel still more not knowing that she was an authorized user on the account of those kind of came into the case in the appellate very thing and they're actually not alleged in the complaint and they're not part of the dispute letter that was sent to equifax the failure to investigate which is part of the claim that's being asserted so i'm not really sure that's part of the record i'm sure makes a difference but i do want to point that out to you i love to hear much about self speak but i can't improve on my colleague's presentation to you the issues were guarding accuracy are exactly the same as to a as they are to chasten the claims in each of the four cases or are not so different as there to be any material daylight between them the fact of the matter is that part of the information that a f provides to a credit reporting agency is the relationship of the consumer to the account that's being reported that's the little box that mr schoen philip afford referred to that says authorized user in other kinds of an authorized user it means that they are not liable on the account up that is the information that then gets reported there is no fact alleging these complaints that would lead to a plausible inference of any time that anybody it was or could have been misled by that report mr mccarthy's real argument is that it's just not fair that is that there's something not fair about a creditor taking this information into account and fairness being a goal of the f c r a we understand but equifax is a role in this credit system is to provide accurate information it's not to ensure fairness or how creditors use that information they need and  x responds differently to different disputes may is it is different it is not necessarily inconsistent that is the say it is not a is not inconsistent to deal with different and some of them didn't i would submit that the most likely and is not this is not in the record i conceive of the most likely explanation is that different furnishes different versions provided different information and therefore had different sort of standing orders about how disputes for that kind of information were to be handled then i think it's that simple and i don't think that that really doesn't have anything to do with accuracy i'd love to answer questions if you'll have any i'm afraid not thank you mccarty to go back to the statement of were the judges and accurate in some of their decisions one thing i would like to address and it it's in the record of that so actually what ha account misleading in such a way as to the extent that it can be expected to adversely affect credit decisions and i argued at length in my brief and in reply that the third circuit picked up from where the fifth nine and says rather technically accurate information was misleading in such a way and to the extent that it can be expected to have an adverse effect generally is a question to be submitted to a jury on a claim under the s c already contesting the reasonableness of the investigation and that and that makes sense for the simple reason is that you're asking judges to make financial decisions on if they can't be if it can negatively affect a credit decision or not and as the case ruled and then argued here is that that is the the accurate ruling or that's the most appropriate ruling because it needs to be determined by a jury not a judge i feel like the judges would have be have a then that is a problem and an issue between the primary account holder and the authorized user not the authorized user and the credit bureaus there is no can't there's no privity between an authorized user and any of these credit card holders chase is just one of them this is this is industry wide you could be an authorized user on most likely most credit card issuers but there's no privity there's no contract signed there's no credit checks there's no obligation and to mirror one hundred percent of an account trade line onto someone's an account an authorized users credit report that has that does not have any  card as far as contractually no obligation to pay it is inaccurate especially when as i argue the bigger picture is even i mean this is this is very widespread authorize users  throughout the entire credit industry so if the authorized user is not even able to address it because when they're when they call that they can only talk to the primary because they don't have a signed contract with the authori the c f p be states that it can be reported they can report the spouse to see if p b also says which i argue with a brief that if someone else's account information is being reported on your on the consumer's credit report that the consumers will generally remove it so that they condone the removal of the account upon you and i can go to that and the police as well i address that thoroughly can include their website on page thirty nine that yes that is an accurate statement the see if he states that if if they want to report a spouse that is on an authorized user account they can but they also say that if the account information it's on your credit report and the consumer doesn't want that can be disputed and they condone the removal of the authorized user and it's practice