we'll hear an argument next in case sixteen three forty nine henson versus santander consumer usa incorporated mr ross mr chief justice and may please the court the fair debt collection practices act applies to debt collectors  another under anyone's interpretation of that term the question in this case is whether that changed when santander purchased an assignment on that that the fourth circuit held that it did wrongly based on its interpretation of the key phrase owed or do another which is  twice in the definition of debt collector once in the principle definition and again in the clause f exceptions the problem with that interpretation is that it cannot be squared with the use of the same phrase in the clause after exceptions particularly with respect to or somebody who is collecting a debt or do another and that same requirement is repeated at the beginning of kwanzaa that has to be somebody and the person collecting or attempting to collect a debt owed or do or started to be able to do another and then it says to the extent such activity meets one of four qualifications and the one i want to focus on is the fourth and that applies to somebody who's engaged in activity concerning a debt obtained by such person as a secured party and a commercial credit transaction involving the credit and i think the parties agree with the f t c as interpretation of this is this is applying to a situation in which a company like the car dealership has gotten a commercial loan from a bank and put up as collateral the debts that it's owned by its customers say car loans the only circumstance which that kind of entity is ever going to be collecting on a consumer debt which is required at the beginning of close up is if they've either foreclosed on the collateral in which case under the u c c they will send a notice to the consumers saying we have been assigned this debt start sending that doing exactly what a debt purchaser does which is collecting from the consumers a debt that has been assigned to it and keeping it on its own account respondants only answer to this is to say that this no no this is a provision that is addressed at the bank that is simply holding the debts as collateral but that can't be right because at the very beginning of a quarter or half congress make clear that the exception only applies to somebody who is actually collecting or attempting to collect a debt and somebody who simply holding a collateral is not collecting or attempting to collect the consumer debt and as a consequence adopt in respondent's interpretation that somebody who is collecting on its own account through an assignment as a debt purchaser does as the commercial creditor does then they our we've just described on their view they're not collecting to that odor do another and as a consequence they cannot be the person to whom congress is referring and subsection f for it is an exception that not only is completely surplusage and  set it's like an exception that renders itself surplusage the beginning of the that there were firemen makes it impossible to satisfy that second or set of requirements and f at the bottom of it for our slant i understand an argument i think you're right it is is one that the respondent has to address but going back to a step or earlier than that the actual text i mean your friend makes the point that your reading gives a different  didn't than it does to do with you beat owed is referring to the past year we do is referring to the present and that's that's unusual i don't think it's that unusual i don't think we would be surprised for example of this phrase red  only in another in that circumstance would be perfectly grammatical and it would be clear that congress was concerned about the another not about the timeframe and that the point of it was to exclude there's who are collecting debts that they originated themselves owing is not a common word that used in that context but exactly that's why congress would use do instead of owed or owing it used or do and we think that that's certainly a permissible interpretation and once we reach that point becomes important particularly when the same phrase is used again in another part of the definition to adopt an interpretation that while it may not be them up the first one that come to mind the first time its use you still need to have an interpretation that allows the same words to prior time frame or present participle referring to the present this court encountered a very similar set of words in robinson versus shell oil where it was trying to decide whether title seven which were habits an employer from a retaliating against it employees whether that meant it's a current employees or could also mean its former employees one of the things the court did although it recognized that kind of out first blush you would think current employees that looked at the statutory interpretation of employee and their employee was defined as an individual employed by the an employer so you had individual employee does the same structure a noun modified by jaron participle that is in the past tense but could it refer either to somebody previously employed or somebody currently employed no spondon in that case made the same argument that respond that makes in this case which is that it must refer to someone who is currently employed this court unanimously rejected that assertion out of hand and  went and looked at the use of the word employee elsewhere in the statute and concluded that it can refer to both and that's all we're asking the court to do in this case as well as to recognize to wrestle do you have a few examples i suspect you thought of this just  owed another and then the context could make clear that it was a debt that had been paid off or to storage them bankrupt but you wouldn't think that right i mean i'm just wondering whether i understand that you have your suit superfluity argument which is a kind of context clue but if you just look at the language is it can you come up with any sentence which says which points toward your redan rather than towards mr chen wigan's so we've given a couple  the first interpretation that leaps to mind but i do think that you know when you encounter a phrase like this it's not ambiguous it can refer we usually when we think about ambiguous phrases you know we can say well you could say this sentence and then it would mean x or you could say the sentence and then it would mean why but my problem when i think about this word is that i can never get it to mean what you wanted to me and no matter how well i construct a sentence well i give you the example of congress that said a debt collector is somebody who regularly collects debts owed or in another i think that would be a perfectly good medical science and congress might not want to use owing because it is an awkward archaic use  but i think you know when you confront a provision like this you have to end up looking at the use in both context and the only way to give the cause f any meaning is to interpret it might be the less natural way in the first place it's also a necessary way to interpret the statute to give meaning to the way or to respect the way the congress has dealt with other assignees because we recognize that probably didn't have the debt mining industry in mind when it wrote the statute but it did have other cities in mind and particularly credit that servicers it's common in the mortgage industry for example for servicing to be performed by somebody else in congress provided in the clause of three that somebody who  debt after it's gone into a default precisely because they need it in order to be able to enforce the debt in court to follow a lawsuit to collect or to foreclose on a mortgage is this is the case comes to us we're not addressing the status santander as a debt service or the that's right my point here is simply a structural one and that is that congress clearly contemplated that some assignees would be debt collectors notwithstanding the fact that they are collecting a debt assigned to them by somebody else which is all that a debt purchases it's an assignment of the doubt for value and congress said that if a mortgage servicer is assigned a debt after it's gone into default congress intended for them to be treated as a debt collector but under respond as we that actually isn't going to be what happens because a mortgage servicer soon as they obtain an assignment under their view they're collecting debt owed and do themselves not owed and do another and so we end up with a situation where the clause three provision and actually only applies to a mortgage servicer who has a contract to collect a debt but not if they've been assigned to that and they're particularly likely as i mentioned to be assigned a debt if they obtain it after default because they need to have that assignment in order to do the things that their customer wants them to do for them which is to follow a lawsuit i don't see a problem with with  after three then the party is attempting to collect a debt owed or due to someone else and it concerns a debt which was obtained and if obtained it doesn't mean you can obtain a debt that you don't i don't see a problem with three so there's there's two problems with that i disagree with it in of obtain i don't think it's a very natural interpretation of it but what it means that i think  the reason you're suggesting is that an assign a debt service or who has an assignment would not be covered if they are assigned that after default and i think that does quite a bit of violence on how congress intended the statute to operate and there's no reason for congress to have thought that it made a difference with respect to the risk that a service or poses to consumers whether they have been simply hired on a contract to collect them why would they not be covered if they quired the debt before it went into i'm sorry after it went into default they would be collecting a jones assigns the debt to servicing company r and so servicing company might have clay it might be said you can use it this way they obtained the debt from company jones and so somebody might say that this assignee is collecting a debt from smith but smith owes another namely but we don't want to cover them in this statute we don't want to cover that kind of debt collector so they write for and the same is true of three they write three because they don't want more gets more good service to be following within the statute unless of course the mortgage servicer is serving a dead mortgage and why shouldn't they all right now that reasoning doesn't seem to me illogical on the other hand if we take your reasoning you have to interpret this is so i was thinking of examples and i thought well what about one of these companies that goes and buys up other companies turns them around and sells them when they buy a company they buy they call the receivables and while they own the company they're going to collect the receivables and so there they are you say on your definition those receivables were once oh did the company that they're bought so on your definition that whole category of people falls within the definition so it seems to me although you point to problems there not insuperable problems with the word obtain well if i accept your definition of is i get into a lot of difficulties now that was were i'm not saying that's my final view as i'm just saying how do you respond so let me address your difficulties and then let me explain why i think the problems on the other side are greater than you seem to think that they are the difficulties arising out of mergers or buyouts of a company i think are completely separate from the issues here that it's a question of whether you would treat collecting debts that are owed to affiliate companies and i think that that's probably also a solution for that problem i think when you are talking about trying to minimize the problems on the other side you are seem to be operating on the assumption that it's possible to say that somebody has an assignment that a service or is not collecting a debt owed or do another or is i'm sorry is collecting the dead go to do another and we know that's not right for two reasons one textural specifically the statute in the second is how assignments are understood to operate in the water generally into default that assignee exception would be unnecessary unless congress understood assignees generally to be collecting a debt that is owed to them and that is consistent with the way assignments work in general so for example article three of the u c c talks about negotiable instruments and it makes a distinction between the person entitle to enforce a negotiable instrument and the own of the debt and it's the person entitle to enforce the pete who has the authority to insist on  payment isn't delivered to sue on the payment and to collect on it and the pete is the person if you pay them the assignee if you pay them the debt it's extinguished even if they don't pass that money on to the person that hired them to collect it so i service or with an at all all of this thing to defeat your argument with respect to three is to think of a situation in which a person or an entity is collecting and that owed to another that person or entity obtained the debt at a time when the debt was not default and that it's very easy to think of a situation like that with respect to the classic debt collector that does nothing but collect other people's that's if obtained means getting that debt for collection so your answer is that's not a reasonable deafened that's not the right definition of obtained so has what it comes down to right i have a couple other responses one is that's not a solution for to be clear because i want no i'm congress intended servicers are simply hired to collect a debt or if the debt is in the fall they're covered by the statute but if they're given an assignment in order to facilitate that collection which is very common when the debt is in default already they're not covered because they're collecting a debt that's owed and do themselves not another in addition i don't think to the extent you know we're looking at what congress was trying to do here congress thought that f three was dealing with servicers who they thought was a different category of people who require different treatment there's but as you just explained justice alito that interpretation necessarily means that any debt collector who is hired to collect a debt before it goes into default when this merely delinquent which happens a lot is entitle to this exception and they excrete the regulation entirely and there is nothing in the legislative history and there's nothing in the reasons people give for why third party debt collectors are covered by the statute which would lead congress to want to provide them with that exception i would say in addition you know obtained is also used in the clause for exception and they said it's used in a way there that cannot be referring to somebody who some write mastodon was for i'm not sure i understood which is sad so let's say your your company is owed a debt by other people of the company and that they get along they give the party extending long security interest in that debt and now there's an effort to collect that debt who is owed that that is not is not still owed to the original party it's not owed to the first security interest is it so if the just to be clear about the hypothetical that the debt hasn't been for the security interest hasn't been foreclosed default at the time it was obtained i'm sorry i'm reading one provision concerns a debt of ten by such person as a secured party in a commercial credit transaction so it's only the bank and the only circumstance in which the bank is going to be collecting from the consumer is if the security interest has been foreclosed upon and it's also important so you could say in that circumstance well maybe the bank is trying to collect from the commercial borrower from the car dealership but that is a defined term in the statute that only applies to  consumer loans so the only time under f for any person will be collecting a consumer loan as a circular creditor is when they have obtained an assignment of that loan as a result of be there for closing on that loan because of  or because it was assigned to them in the first place but in either case they're doing exactly the same thing as a purchaser they are collecting data on their own account that was originated by somebody else and assigned to the real the situation i mean it's possible to think of situations that would fall within that and may be that they're not things that are not situations that are very likely to come up and in the real world but the strength of your and the the degree of  absurdity that you have to show under for depends on the ambiguity of the phrase do or do and i think that's not just not the first way you'd read that it's not the fiftieth way you would read that it's just your for your fight you're really going uphill on that you need something really strong to overcome that i would say  right the first set of the requirements cannot be met and the situation with the second set of requirements then dire graeme's with circles that do not touch and i think that that is a very serious problem at the same time you know and interpret in look at the underlying purposes of the statute in the way that congress has treated other similarly situated entities and the fact is a death bar is much more like a debt service or with an assignment which i think congress clearly intended to be treated as a debt collector when  pain that assignment after that it was and you don't dispute i take it that this particular context with this particular type of energy is not what congress had before it when it passed the law i think that the industry has evolved from the way that and given one as a service or to facilitate collection and i don't think that there's anything in the language of the statute that distinguishes between them because in both instances the assignee is the person to whom the debt is presently that's true about as i think your understand your point in assigning is i think now look at for where is the word assignment it's not there and what they're talking about is a person who takes a secur interest in the debt i suppose or he lend some money to the creditor and in return it takes some kind of security interest doesn't really say what caused it and as part of that the initial creditor might assign him the original that it might not and what you've said is all they almost always do do they i don't know that how do we know that i mean i remember vaguely commercial transactions and i remember that there are all kinds of security interests you could take a secured interest in a car you could take a secured interest in their house you could take a secured interest in all kinds of things so where did you get this idea that in fact a creditor with the security interest who has taken it didn't say assignment but now it's so so where did this come from that we're only talking about a ees and that's important for if we're not always talking about assigning but only some of the time you can't raise your objection except to a subset of the section four people and if you were talking about a subset assuming you're right no one right statute perfectly you always under include or over so let me turn you back to the language of the provision because i think ultimately you don't need to know that much about commercial credit transactions to be persuaded of our point the beginning of that makes clear that all the cause of exceptions including the four only apply to any person collecting or attempting to collect the consumer right and so then you have to ask yourself under what circumstances and for only applies to the secured part of the bank right the concerns of that obtained by such person as a secure part is was only ever going to be the bank and so you ask yourself when will a bank be collecting on a consumer debt and the only circumstance that anybody has proposed is whether they've even been assigned that argument for close very able counsel on the other side has not been able to come up with any of the examples that  were attempting to get to another game even as two transactions that don't fit that type that they are with their creditors themselves and whole business collection activities subject to the close off exceptions and that's an important point in response to their argument that congress couldn't possibly have intended to regulate financial services industry that you didn't you didn't include or here's the newbie with you and you didn't raise that do not raise that is a separate question i do think because it is a predicate to resolving the question presented is fairly before you but regardless it is an important point about why their argument that the financial services industry couldn't have  over that part of your briefs are predicated on this your i don't understand why it's a predicate at all we can fully answer the question presented without getting into that you know anyway i think it's because it's an important part of our structural argument about why their interpretation of order do another is not cannot be correct because they say the financial services industry is not what congress had in mind here and we make the point that look i'm a plain reading of the text even under their interpretation of order to another financial services providers are covered if i could be robbers of the remainder of my time thank you counsel the ground that it is regularly attempting to collect at zero to do another the answer to that question is plainly no because such an entity is attempting to collect debts owed or do itself now i just want  was their principal business so let's assume that the principal business of your client is to collect debts that are to others with your position that they are exempt from the act simply because this debt they hold no we would not contend that justice sotomayor who he was sure if your client is they had planted right and proven that the principal part of your client's business was the collection business is the collection of any debts regardless of to whom those debts are i would also note parents that equally that to the extent that mr russell advances an alternative argument this argument concerning santander's alleged servicing activity that that's also an argument under the provision that issue here namely the regularly collects provision and with regard to the language of the regularly call acts provision i don't think that petitioners really dispute that ours is the most natural interpretation of that provision as i understand petitioners arguments both in their briefs and now at oral argument today they're really making two principal arguments the first is this argument concerning the exclusions that our interpretation somehow renders certain exclusions from the definition of debt collector nonsensical and the second is a policy argument an argument that if congress had focused on this issue congress would have wanted to regulate debt purchasers as well as dedicated debt collectors and services and i hope over the course of this argument to cover both of those points but let me go directly to this point concerning the exclusions because i think that really was the focus of mr russell's argument this morning we believe that our interpretation not only gives meaning to those exclusions which is all that's really required but actually gives those exclusions congress's intended meaning and let me start with the exclusion in clause f for which got comparatively little treatment and petitioners opening brief it now appears really to be the centerpiece of  we believe that that exclusion has meaning in deed has congress's intended meaning with regard to a type of financing to which mr russell looted so called accounts receivable financing and these are circumstances in which a secured party could attempt to collect on debts even before they foreclose on the collateral because of course once a secured party forecloses on the collateral it is essentially in the same position as a debt purchaser let's take mr russell's let's suppose you have a situation where a car dealership let's call it sam's car is comes to my client's on time there and says we'd like to borrow some money and santa and barry says in response fine what are you going to put up as collateral and sam's car says we're going to put up these accounts receivable that we have and we're going to give you suntan dare the entitlement in order to pay off this loan to collect some or all of the money owed on those accounts receivable in that circumstance certainly could be said to have obtained rights in the debt but the debt is still owed or do sam's cars in the relevant sense it's still owed to sam's cars because in that circumstance the creditor retains an interest in the accounts  change the right to demand payments on those accounts as well and this is a situation that congress seems to have expressly contemplated and for those members of the court who are interested in legislative history or might be tempted to be interested in legislative history i'd point to the senate report at page four where it says that this exemption targets quote the collection of debts owed to a creditor when the creditor is holding the receivable account as collateral for commercial credit extended to the creditor and so congress seem to contemplate a circumstance in which the secured party would be engaged in collection activity even before it foreclosed on the collateral and if you take a look at the sources cited in footnote four of  acknowledged that this was a type of financing that is contemplated and that is potentially covered by this exclusion and the very sources that petitioners cite in the uniform commercial code again contemplate the possibility that this occurred party could be taking action even before default and foreclosure and in particular i think my my not have this right but i think there replying to that is what happens in the situation that you mention is that the initial creditor who sold the car whatever and they're going to give this collateral that they get and the person who takes the collateral say so and there takes an assignment of the debt and they're saying taking an assignment of the debt once that happens it isn't true that the car buyer owes anything to the car dealer but if i got it right good maybe maybe not but if it's if it's true that true then he is not collecting the debt for another so am i right about what you think his reply yes well i think that that is mr russell's reply and mr russell really fixates on this concept of assignment but as you pointed out in his justice alito pointed out assignment is neither here nor there with regard to this exclusion the concept of assignment appears only once in the f t c p a that is in the a exclusion to the creditor definition which i think both sides acknowledge is not dispositive of the inquiry here i think that the dispositive consideration is whether the service or in the context of clause f three or the secured party in the context of cause for acquires complete ownership or acquire something less than that and i think that when congress used the word obtain in both of these provisions it was contemplating the full panoply of arrangements where an entity ownership and so to move to cause f three and i think the analysis is analogous under both causes there are all sorts of ways in which an assignment  servicing arrangement could be structured and one of the ways in which it could be structured is through a so called assignment for collection the type of arrangement that this court considered i'll be out in a quite different context in the sprint communications case where you have  original entity retaining equitable title but passing legal title to the entity that engages in collection and so if a service or had legal title but not complete title the service or would of course come within the exclusion and so again we think that with regard to both of these exclusions we're really giving these exclusions their intended meaning because congress wanted to ensure that where you have a service or or where you have a secured party that engages in collection activity when either if those entities has not acquired full ownership that there is an exemption from the statute in the context of servicers that exemption only applies to create a fault of debt but in both circumstances the exclusions have meaning and that's really all that is required when the by far the more natural reading of the relevant statutory provision is ours and i do want to take just a minute to address that provision because we shouldn't lose sight of it because after all that's what this court has been asked to interpret i want to go directly to the hypotheticals that mr russell has offered today in their hypotheticals both of which appear in his reply brief and explain why the language of those hypotheticals differs in critical respects from the language that we have here the first is the hypothetical these are both at page four of the reply brief of a statute refers to a person who regularly creates debts created by another now of course as we argue in our brief we believe that the grammatical way to express that view would be to say a person who regularly collects debts that had been created by another but even if you didn't agree with that i think that hypothetical is distinct in a very important way the act of creation is a discreet act and it's an act that of necessity has to have taken place in the past would be very odd to talk about regularly collecting debts as they are being created you would necessarily think well that debt had been created at some prior time the word owed by contrast refers to the status of a debt and the current status of a debt may be very different from the status of the debt at an earlier time and so that language again i think is very different from the language we have here with regard to mr russell's other hypothetical hypothetical of a statute that covers a person who regularly collects debts owed or owing another we explain in our brief that odin knowing our words that are essentially used anonymously and have come to have the same meaning and so i do think that that would be a circumstance in which congress could be using a double it that is essentially superfluous much like a phrase like in the bad or cease and desist or no and void and many other examples that this court has cited in the past but again even if you disagreed with that the only reason why you would be saying that  it refers to a different tense is in an effort to give meaning to that word by contrast here we have a phrase debts owed or do another again we don't think that there's much difference in meaning if any between the words owed or and indeed those words often appear together in various permutations both another statutes and at common law it may very well be that the words have a subtly different meaning because as we explained in a footnote of our brief it is possible to talk about a debt being a code but not yet do and so if i receive a credit card bill from my credit card company and it says that i have to make a payment by may the fifteenth that debt debt is indeed presently zero did but not yet do but what you can't get from the statutory language and again even if you agreed with ninety eight percent of mr russell's argument i don't think you can get over the last two percent you can't get from the statutory language the fact that oed and do refer to different points in time in other words under mr russell's interpretation it would be as if the statute reached any person who attempts to regularly attempts to collect debts that had been code or are due another and the reason why mr russell puts those two terms in two different different reference points is simply because if both of those terms referred back to the point of origination you really would have a super problem with the statute at that point you would render the originator exclusion in cause f two wholly superfluous but the problem with the interpretation that petitioners now proffer is that again you have to take this additional step of having these two words refer to different points in time and even if you thought that the use of the word code could refer to two different points in time you wouldn't be able to take that additional step of saying the do refers to a different time from chairman it doesn't make much sense though does it i mean take this very case so your clients serviced the stat and counted as a debt collector at that time and then your client purchased the debt and all of a sudden it's not a debt collector and i guess the question is what happened in between the time when your client service the debt and the time when your client purchased the debt that in any way to changed its relationship with the b r such that congress wouldn't be concerned any longer with its behavior so just as kagan we don't concede that simply by virtue of the fact that we service petitioners debt and certain other debts involved in this case that that was sufficient to render us an entity that regularly collects or let's assume that for that but i'm just happy to assume that for purposes of the question the relevant inquiry is whether we were a debt collector at the time of the alleged violation if you take a look at the substantive provisions of the f t c p a a provisions like six hundred ninety two even after they're all keyed off conduct engaged in by an entity that is a debt collector and i think the fair inference is that you have to be a debt collector at that time and notably at the point at which we acquired essentially the remainder of city's auto ending business we really stepped into city's shoes in a practically significant way at that point we took over the business and it was as if we were the original creditor and while this is not the record i hope the court will permit me one liberty when we send out notices to borrowers we obviously send out those notice or is in notices  point it was as if we had all of the same incentives as the originator of the data we certainly had an incentive to ensure payment but we also had an incentive to maintain a business relationship with those why you have the same incentives to maintain their goodwill well i do think that we would have incentives to maintain their goodwill in the way that the sort of fly by night debt collectors that congress was seeking to target forty years ago when an act of the f c didn't we could have an incentive to try to market other financial products to their customers and again the only sense in which we were different from citi was that first as you say we didn't originate the  loans and second we again stepped into the shoes of the relationship out a later time but to the set that this argument really goes to the broader policy arguments that petitioners are making and i think petitioners rely on the fact that we were previously service or is kind of as a door into those policy arguments again and we don't think that if congress had focused on debt purchasers it would have been concerned about entities  so i think both sides now recognize that the question of whether or not respondent is a debt collector doesn't in any way depend on the question of whether or not respondent falls within the definition of creditor or not those two provisions operate perpendicularly but i would say that with regard to the definition of creditor we believe we would plainly fall within the definition of creditor because we would be a person to whom a debt is owed indeed as you'll be aware of justice sotomayor in our brief we rely on the fact that that definition is expressly framed in the present tense as yet another textual q as to why our interpretation is correct i think with regard to the exclusion from that definition i think that the one thing i would say is that petitioners go to great lengths to suggest that we would fall within that exclusion but i think that the gymnastics that petitioners have to go through are much greater than any gymnastics we have to go through to justify our interpretation because if you take a look at page forty nine of petitioners brief they argue that we would fall within the ass and the exclusion which refers to a person who receives an assignment or transfer of a debt in default solely for the purpose of facilitating collection of such debt for another to reach even a situation in which an entity is collecting a debt for itself their argument as to why we would fall within that exclusion is that we would be standing in the shoes of the originator and therefore when we are collecting the debt for ourselves we are collecting the debt for another in other words for an entity other then the originator and so to the extent that congress included that exclusion it works perfectly well under our interpretation this court need not address the definition of creditor because again the parties both acknowledge that the definition of creditor sheds little direct light on the interpretation of the definition of debt collector but in our view the use of the ass and the exclusion in that definition cover situations in which you have either a sham transaction or a situation in which ass and in fact obtains full title to a debt but has a contractual obligation once it collects to pay that money back to the counter party to the transaction there's nothing about that exclusion that suggests any intent on congress's part to reach that purchasers and i think everyone acknowledges that congress was not focusing on debt purchasers in one nine hundred seventy seven there's no direct reference to debt purchasers in any of the legislative history of which we are aware and really what petitioners are asking this court to do is to extend the definition of debt collector to debt purchasers based on these sorts of policy considerations and  inquiry into the entities overall practices but what petitioners are attempting to do is to inject a quite different theory both legally and factually as to why we satisfy that definition into this case if you take a look at the question presented in the petition the question presented focuses on whether a company and i'm quoting from from roman numeral one whether a company there regularly attempts to collect debts it purchased after the debts had fallen into default is a debt collector subject to the act petitioners alternative theory is that we somehow fall within that definition because of our servicing activity and in particular petitioners point to one of our f c c filings for the proposition that we engage in other servicing activities namely servicing activity of other debts for other and it has now that's not within the scope of the question presented and as petitioners acknowledge in their reply brief that argument was not made in the body of the petition nor was that the argument that petitioners made in the lower courts if you take a look at both the fourth circuit's opinion and the briefing in the fourth circuit and in the district court i think that the most that can be said about petitioners argument is that they made an argument along the lines of what justice kagan suggested they made an argument that by virtue of the fact that we serviced the very debts at issue in this case that there would be something in that quote as a policy matter about saying that by virtue of that servicing activity we're now no longer within the scope of the statute i think what petitioners are trying to do here is quite different they're attempting to make an argument that by virtue of again our other servicing activity that is sufficient to bring us within the ambit of the definition and there is no allegation in the complaint which you can see for yourself in the joint appendix to that effect and that has never been petitioners theory in this case and i would make one parent note about that even if you thought that as a court of first view you could somehow take judicial notice of these f c c filings or anything else in an effort to bolster this now long forfeited argument the relevant inquiry for purposes of the definition of debt collector concerns our activities at the time we engaged in the alleged violations as i noted earlier those violations are alleged to have taken place five years ago and i can represent this court that santander is business was in some respects very different and in particular santander had much less servicing activity in two thousand and twelve than it does today all of this of course would be a matter of to be alleged in the complaint if that were in fact petitioners alternative theory as to how we qualify as a definition of debt collector and petitioners had every opportunity in every court along the way to advance that theory and yet they put all their eggs in one basket when they came to this court and attempted to argue that we qualify as a debt collector solely by virtue of our purchases and under the more natural interpretation of the relevant statutory language such purchasers such purchases simply do not count to word whether or not an entity is engaged in regularly collecting debts owed or do another that wouldn't that is an issue that could be raised in another case our submission is simply that it can't be raised in this case because it has been forfeited and entirely contrary to the argument that petitioners make in their reply brief they seem to suggest that th something that we are advancing as an alternative ground for affirms that is not correct this would be an alternative ground for reversal if you were to give petitioners another bite at the apple to pursue this theory you would have to vacate the judgment of  court of appeals and remain and on that ground and allow petitioners at this late stage in the litigation to amend their complaint in order to provide factual support for that argument and i'm certainly not aware of any precedent for this court giving a litigant that opportunity when they have had every opportunity to do so in the lower courts that have not pursued that theory at the point at which we moved to dismiss in the district court on the ground that petitioners had not satisfied the element of liability that would be a debt collector that was the point at which you would expect petitioners to seek leave to him and if they wanted to pursue a theory not within the four corners of their complaint and they can speak you asli did not do so the has a factual premise to namely this argument that by virtue of the fact that we serviced this relatively small number of deaths at issue that there would be something in equitable about saying that we are no longer a debt collector once we have acquired those debts that's the argument that the court of appeals is addressing at pages eighteen eighteen one thousand and the appendix to the petition now i will know one thing about the court of appeals opinion i think that there is some language in that carry over paragraph that seems to suggest that the question of whether or not an entity is a debt collector focuses on the particular debts at issue and i think we would respectfully acknowledge that that's not quite correct under either the principal purpose definition or the regularly collects definition you certainly have to look at the energies overall operations and as we explain in our brief the question of whether a certain type of activity is sufficient to give rise to regular collection has been the subject of some discussion in the lower courts we think that the better view of this realized largely on district court opinions because there's very little circuit authority on this is that in assessing whether an entity regularly collects debts owed or do another you have to look at those debts in relation to the entities overall collection activities and determine whether that collection activity is a substantial part of the entities overall collection activities but that is an issue that would have to be resolved if petitioners had relied on this alternative servicing theory below and i would submit that this court if it were to give  opportunity to pursue that theory would probably have to say something about that or at a minimum leave that issue open for the lower courts and of course our broader submission with regard to this alternative theory is that it was not preserved before this court at the cert stage nor was  preserved in the lower courts i see that my yellow why it isn't so i just want to say one last thing on this issue of the policy arguments because i certainly don't want the court to be left with the impression that if congress had focused on this issue it surely would have wanted to bring that purchasers within the scope of the statute petitioners raise this suggestion of horribles that there are various diversified financial institutions that are moving into the secondary market for distress debt i simply don't think that that's true as a factual matter and i would encourage the court to look at the secondary sources that petitioners cite for that proposition at page nine of their opening brief in page sixteen of their reply brief there simply is no evidence that the goldman sachs's and the black stones of the world are suddenly engaging in the business of debt collection but the problem with petitioners interpretation is that it really would sweep in and it is like suntanned bear and again if you take a look at the transaction at issue here what's a ton bear was doing was not buying distressed debt on some secondary market it was engaged in an arm's length commercial transaction where it essentially acquired the entirety of city's auto lending business both non defaulted and defaulted debts and so in a very real sense stepped into cities shoes in that regard and so while this may not have been a transaction of the sort the justice brier posited where you have an entity that's truly a successor in interest it's a pretty close cousin to that sort is sister city out of business it's no longer writing that my understanding is that citi is very much still in business but it's not in the auto ending business and th two separate transactions acquired somewhere in the neighborhood of six and a half billion dollars worth of auto loans city like many other large lenders essentially got out of the auto lending business in the wake of the last financial crisis acquired this entire portfolio and so this case really illustrates i think why congress may not have wanted to bring debt purchasers or at least all debt purchasers within the ambit of the statute and again if you take a look at the secondary market for distressed debt which is a very large market most of the purchasers on that market would qualify as debt collectors under the principal purpose definition thank and counsel two minutes  thank you so let me end by responding to the respondents last point we know that congress would have intended to sweep these financial services companies into the coverage under that because it did that's our alternative argument explains why so long as these companies are also servicing debts for other they are subject to the act they are debt collectors subject to the cause of exceptions so when they acquire a portfolio out the clause of two exception or f three exception exempt them with respect to all portfolio debts that were current at the time that they obtained them justice kagan we gave examples on page four of our reply brief of abuses one of which is an applicant to disclose every debt owed by a foreign creditor which i think would be big us with respect to others owed in the past are owed in the current timeframe and i think it's important here to to keep in mind that let me return to close for just for a second respondent's only argument which is the new one that they've thought of in the interim before fi in doing this oral argument is that four is about a circumstance in which somebody is collecting the debt based on collateral these are sometimes called notification and non notification accounts receivable financials  the debt on the basis of assignment on its own account exactly like a purchaser their proposed solution to a four simply doesn't work and nobody has been able to come up with a circumstance in which f or has any work to do or makes any coherent and definition of owed or do another last point i would like to make is their interpretation allows quite easy evasion even by third party debt collectors we know congress wanted to get it allows as i discussed with justice alit third party debt collector to evade the statute so long as it is hired to collect the debt before the debt goes into default even once it's delinquent that allows a service or who would otherwise be covered by the act because they obtained the debt in default to avoid it so long as they simply receive an assignment of the debt for collection purposes because somebody who is assigned the debt is collecting a debt owed and do themselves not owed and do another and we don't think that congress could have intended that and even with respect to a small number  smaller number of third party debt collectors who are not falling under the principal purpose clause i finish all they have to do is change their contract with their customer to arrange for a purchase scene of the debt that they have been hired to collect and  range to give back sixty percent of what they collect by virtue of that assignment and they would have aid regulation as well thank you counsel cases submitted