damages for being subject to the collection activity that particular area carries with it a cause nation requirement so that unless and until there is some type of violation law yes the law is violated then the collector to show that he has procedures and other systems in place that would you know yet if the collection agency comes to me and i'm a lawyer and they say this is the dad this is the day person are you saying that i is a lawyer they would have to independently investigate each and every day behalf and it's my duty to hire investigator and investigate independently those debts or is something more required and i'm not saying that there wasn't something more in this case whether he should have generally recognized as a foundation if you will for both the plaintiff and the defendant's lawyers that the that people are not wanting to get sued frivolously  standards both at the state and federal level i think the hinds decisions as well as the developed case law says that lawyers are supposed to do that  does not fit within the confines of what i would expect a lawyer to do to sue somebody based upon what a collector says based upon what the client says in this case we had a bogus that we had it or at least from our perspective it was a bogus debt and we have this date not received your cation of it and collateral case that was brought up by opposing raised and you know some of the material that in conference between counsel i considered talking as you are not only considered less than a token issue i considered it a non issue because with the constraints that room poses upon u i was surprised that this jury was out for three to four hours to come back with a defense verdict and during the course of the trial there was at least one objection raised when the judge addressed the jury during their deliberations we thought he was shown or at least suggested that they come back on a reasonable in the standard and the only that which is reasonable so even at the trial level i think the most logical way to dispose of the jury verdict is the judge instructed the jury on a reasonable standard which does not apply i would  back to strict liability for just a moment do we have to reach the strict liability issue if we were to find for example that there really was a genuine issue of material fact based on the notes that brumley talk and both of them are cited in one case that did in fact you know what the issue is that knowledge so if you would like me to i can submit it right introduce to get from the deputy clerk to form and make out sufficient copies and we the issue in this case comes down to plaintiff's dispute regarding the amount of this obligation to this to this doctor this clinic the act that we're talking about is designed the whole purpose of the act is to deal with some reason and here's the use which was very strong at the beginning is now tapered off is there a problem with the mechanics here or are not no statutory construction there's no analysis an assertion this is strict liability the gearing case adopts that as well and so there hasn't been a direct analysis of that but i think the more precise way to look at it each section of the act that's out what the standard is for that particular section so the first section that's at issue in this case which is text and sixty ninety two g the notice provisions congress has that out certain information debt collector must provide to a consumer it is the purpose of that section if that out in the legislative history is to prevent or eliminate the problem lot of dining the wrong person or a debt that's been paid it is a notice provision to identify to consumer of their legal rights now the words you don't have to just pay this you can't you do have rights to dispute this so the question is have you has a debt collector provided this information they don't provide the information that it's a violation because they haven't said what congress says they need to say there are cases regarding whether the language has been overshadowed and that's what came up in the in the russell case where the yes the debt collector gave the required notice but then on the other side of the document gave other notice that was inconsistent unclear that was something that was deemed misleading potentially misleading to a debt collector excuse me to a consumer and that again is what this act is designed to prevent is abuse of rafting oppressive  up the information and the definition of debt no display in this in the statute the statute defines stet as an obligation or alleged obligation there there is the statute contemplates there can it would be a problem for you i'm not prepared to i would assume that is some dollars yes that's in their records they know what the issue is i want to make one point on that though there are there's no doubt at least after the debt collector cannot use false misleading deceptive again tactics representations regarding the amount of the tax would go back to the definition of debt which is an alleged obligation there's other language within the action and that's another issue i think that's getting kind of confused and we're conflating separate events here which is debt collection practices from a debt collector versus what happens in a lawsuit when i was there now we're on a level playing field we've got each side is where the supreme court says no we're not going to read the statute to create an exception for lawyers for because of the legislative history the context we don't believe that's what congress meant and any of these anomalies that people identified that could come from lawyers being within this act we're going to trust the courts to to construe the various provisions of the act in a plausible way that doesn't want to limit judicial remedies which the statute clearly is not intended to do am not you know i don't know they're i have no doubt there is a remedy for that kind of conduct but whether it's within the scope of the statute and what congress is intent was an anathema statute and the type of behavior the statute was designed to eliminate lose that collection loftis especially not from the lawyer standpoint of collecting these and please the court counsel my name is william good i represent capital credit and collection service let me first i just take a little bit of a bold move here in the strict liability before i get to trial or so as well strict liability i do not believe applies in the act for this reason and that is that it runs afoul of whether or not a debt collector has to prove a death that is really something for the state courts to do and bringing that collecti and where the legislature and congress and did not intend and post ric liability can be found in the definitions section under the definition of this the that and of a consumer and there it gives us a range with the section over that's sixteen ninety two a if you refer to some sections three and five under five it says that means any obligation or alleged obligation of a consumer and then subsection three means any natural person obligated or allegedly obligated so one range of the debt to an alleged an obligation to a what you have is a range of possibilities that means someone can be wrong they can allege a debt and be wrong so congress contemplated that just because you say someone owes one hundred dollars doesn't mean they so to impose strict liability when congress itself contemplated that there is a difference between an allegedly obligation and an obligation it just runs afoul and it can't be resolved and so you have to look why did congress put in that language it could have simply said alleged obligation or could have said obligation but it said both so it means there can be error in what's being claimed or and what's being represented in this case the way the statute is written had best some of the language might imply a presumption of some type of intent and and then sixty ninety two you there there has to be some intent there thus far lot of the discussion here today and also in the briefs talks about what people knew or should have know well again if we have strict no i don't believe so on these facts what about what about the bromley information or notes the problem is it is the this is the dialogue and process the validity i think i think she came to learn that there was a problem when she got into it analyzing the underlying documents supporting this death and again that points more to someone's knowledge rather than simply strict liability if you err you're wrong and you're and you've violated the act so why isn't that a fact question to defeat summary judgment it's not a fact question to didn't really intend to have to prove everything before they go that far and i think i have some language in there of the sampler case in my brief that talks about that now let me address t brought to our attention and that is the hearing in the rough ok there's something very different about the gearing in the russell case than going to the underlying debt and here with gearing this claim of subrogation this is something that the debt collector had entirely within their own knowledge and then russell when they designed their own form of having one type of notice on the front and a different statement on the back and whether it's thirty days or twenty days or twenty five days again this is something that was entirely within the knowledge of the debt collector that differs from being able to prove the validity of the underlying in other russell they had it within their own power to design their own forms our here in this case we're it's the that the consumers are challenging whether or not they owe any have any liability whatsoever their position actually is that well we had some agreement or our health care provider had an agreement with an insurance carrier that we shouldn't be billed at all therefore the debts never balance so there would be no way of meeting that standard if a debt collector had to prove the validity of every day mr girls in his opening argument suggested that russell was really built on ninth circuit precedent do you have a response i don't think it was built on russell has been this distinguished on the facts many times by district courts within its own within its own circuit as well as other courts and that's really the difference here and when you start to distinguish all these cases on their facts then we're getting we're beginning to build up a body of case law that may show that strict liability is not the rule under the fair debt collection practice claimed by the consumers and i must say one other thing and let me shift just a moment to this this trial mr girl makes a statement that it was a unfair trial judge girls at one point during deliberations had a court reporter transcribed an hour of testimony and then he read it to the jury because he understood what was the important aspect of the f t c v a and that was the conduct of the debt collector that was the issue there and that was really the issue in the trial is this oral communication that was going back and forth and whether the consumer had in effect consented to that type a log so i think the trial i think were set up to avoid both of those purposes unfortunately my clients never got the opportunity to find out whether or not they'd paid misstep mr  maintained this insurance covers life psychological needs as result of that she was trying to work with the original creditor to resolve that because she liked her therapist was basically the breakdown in the system that arose from this bogus death the sixteen ninety two g process that is important to our case was that mr mr information that are required to be disclosed sixteen i mean three is the question of does an oral dispute count that would put a debt collector under a heightened consumer but a dispute in writing to trigger an obligation on the debt collector to provide a verification and sixty ninety three g a five is the section that specifically says they are entitled to in the name and address of the original creditor if you look at just the regulatory purpose because our position is that there are the collector that collector that is based solely upon the conduct of the debt collector standard is to collectively group subsections three four and five into one paragraph the point i'm trying to make is that subsection about a written dispute by the debt collector in the case of a written this is it not only heightens the requirement for the debt collector to verify the debt but it also requires that they did not mean and mail verification writing is required to disputed the subsection a three does not require writing and there's other sections and i think that due to the court at least the hawaii district court who distinguished the man case and it would be was a mental health the mental health care industry specifically contracts with providers to avoid sending mental health care bills out to  submitted for decision