from this case arises out of the defendant's exhaustive wide ranging efforts to determine how much money they might be able to collect my clients the chandlers jury in the course of that investigation the photographed their house and tried in vain to learn the balances in their bank accounts the district court found that the investigator who obtained the credit reports had violated the fair credit reporting act which while pronounced ficker a as matter of analysis supply carious liability under strict really rests on three key facts first the district court determined that the investigator mr pruitt violated a thicker as a matter of law and the defendants have never seriously disputed that he did so while acting on behalf of the defendants and finally the district court it's not let let's assume that what you say is correct still where where do you tie your vicarious liability theory into the statutory language the lawyer is responsible yes exactly as they should rather so explain to me where the sales staff story how the staff story language would be accommodated accommodated with your theory certainly or that is precisely the point where the relatively recent us supreme court case of meyer which we cited in both of our briefs comes into play in meyer the court and  the same is also true that is correct the same is also true of the fair debt collection practices act of the national labor relations act of the another federal labor statute that i was confused with the person can violate the and only by false pretenses and negligence or intentional conduct i i believe that the language is the same in all relevant respects you're representing eight how could anybody reasonably interpret and oral request for an answer that search confirmed in writing a request for an asset search where the agent himself upon the initial conversation did not check the box for a fair credit reporting act credit report search how could it remotely be reasonable for him to have interpreted a request for an asset search as a request for a credit report i've six point purpose under the statute so the absence of that i check in that box he said simply means that nobody specifically told me that he had a proper purpose under figure at the same time however he the defendants used words know i'm concerned with the same exact point that drummers raymond if he's if he's told we have a claim against this person we want investigated i don't see how i could equate that judgment i do believe that's a jury question and i he was he was the other things he pointed out where the defendants were referred by a collections attorney so this sort of got him thinking that this was a collections matter they they seem almost to have been careful to dance around the credit reports to be checked when somebody has a judgment because that's one of the way to find out where the assets are and so the question is would it have been possible for this for mr pruitt to have concluded that that there was a judgment in this case and i think that was a but i think primarily the thing that the chandlers are worried about is the fact that mr pruitt forwarded this credit report to some other private investigator who had in the past demonstrated an unusual ability to locate bank account information based only on the information in credit reports and he was never heard from again and so the chandlers to one degree or another face an ongoing threat of having this information fall into the somewhat remote probably i understand your argument is that when the lawyer says investigate this we've got a claim you think a jury could find that snake which and that the lawyer didn't say and don't we don't have a judgment he had noticed that it was going to be a violation of the law that search ok i guess we understand ok like you i'd like to turn if i could for a minute or two to that state law causes of action you know why don't you in doing that at least at some point plea disclose confidential data to the lawyer yes to the organization as i understood that with the district courts that was the district court in giving summary judgment i think that that was just a failure of proof on your side of the case on that in other words a stockbroker gave a statement or a declaration saying i didn't disclose anything confidential and there's not anything adequate on the other side of that at least that's how i read the district court am i'm joined misunderstand what i want you to do is to tell me what evidence is in the record that raises the genuine issue of that mr fein prepared for mr sonnets which in turn was handed to mr that that mr van dyck the stockbroker had disclosed mr chandler's investment style and the general size of his disclosure that was in turn disclosed that was communicated confidential purposes and not to anybody else there is any evidence at all that chandler communicated investment activities well there's probably no doubt about that but that's not my question my question is where is there evidence that chandler that the size of mr challenge portfolio because of his confidential position because of his position as a fiduciary he then turns around and disclose that information this is undisputed to the other members of a why i kill if i tell everybody in this room that i invest in municipal bonds the fact that my broker knows it doesn't mean that that's confidential if i tell my broker please invest this million dollar portfolio for me the fact that my portfolio is worth a million dollars is confidential information is there evidence  funk try to be very brief i think your honour's understand that what plan talents are trying to do is greatly enlarge the boundaries of agency law in a context that it's not appropriate i'm likely to get your response to the argument that the supreme court in miers clarified that we instigate or changed it in some way and why it does or doesn't affect the analysis here first of all miers was racial discrimination case and you have to consider the context of the facts in making decisions on how agency law has to be applied there's no question that agency law applies to this case there's numerous cases that have applied agency law to this case and it has always been in the context of the parent authority always plenty of precedent the courts have considered it there's got to be something as your honor that ties in the purposes of the act and why you should apply the applicable agency principles and here super broad strict liability simply is manifestly unfair and unjust to the innocent persons who have not asked for received obtained used were in any way got these credit reports this is something that i think would be appropriate for another context if if this were to come up in a where the people charged to be libel were somehow users people associated with credit reporting agencies had accounts that then there would be appropriate so much as holding john porch a client pull this case you have to remember to foresee that he's going to go get a credit report john pruitt then goes to his neighbor's computer access is his neighbor jack jack no john cortex account and basically steals the code and takes  code and uses it in order to get the credit reports so to ask us to foresee that something like this is going to happen is just absurd on the invasion of privacy issues your honour's  ruling on the invasion of privacy just mr van dyke's potential liability for disclosing that confidence could you address that because as i recall what i saw on the record there was evidence that went to college together they grew up together they founded this company together there was an awful lot of information communicated between those people that was not in a confidential relationship and i think judge walker simply decided that there had been no proof presented by mr chandler that that information about the size of the portfolio and that he traded in risky ventures that had come from that broker relationship there was zero evidence presented on that point and very simply that's why the judge granted the motion you would normally you would normally expect a broker to come into contact with that kind of information as broker well mr van dyke also i believe in his be large a lot of them are pretty close to the vest so someone might have the right to keep that confidential if they want so the question i guess i have is what's in the record case let me say that that is distinguishable easily for two reasons at least number one is the miers firm had the capacity to pull credit reports using a subscriber the meiers firm had forms on which the employees of the firm could write down the request for a credit report and submit it directly to the subscriber therefore i thought my second point in the miers case the court determined that the law  employee not an independent contractor not an agent but the employee with apparent authority to pull the credit reports and that leads us right into the f c c are a purpose  intent and that is to protect the privacy of consumers by requiring that those in the credit industry stablished procedures to protect the privacy yes person was used yes and there's no question that a person who's not in the industry might be able to willfully violate the act or an employee would be responsible not just the corporate employer i think that that was the intent it was never intended by that act to impose stricter vicarious liability as has been said in many cases congress knows how to impose third party versed in the law to not tell a private investigator was asked to do an asset check you know don't act credit reports that legally thank you for asking that i was just about to go to that i spent a couple of hours the other day looking for statutes in acts that protect consumers privacy both federal and state and in the space of two hours i found thirty one different acts and i were not going to read them all to you but i would there's the federal privacy act of one nine hundred seventy four the federal financial modernization act of ninety nine the federal trade commission's privacy rule the federal bank holding company are obligated to list every possible violation that an independent contractor who is licensed by the state of california might do is he is supposed to go through one hundred six or five hundred seventy what if he misses the five hundred ninth i mean it's rather absurd to say that the attorney and this attorney by the way has absolutely no experience in the credit industry no familiarity with the f c r a no involvement in debt collection there's no history there was no reason he's not in the industry and the f c r a well if you had gone intentionally and said i want a credit report then that would be a will it would fall under the person's one thousand nine hundred six amendment but he didn't do that he had no reason even to know that the private investigator had the capacity to pull credit reports and by the way an examination of significant to collection of assets he asked for what any attorney would ask for and that's i want an asset search and walk counsel can try to characterize this as a broad reaching and exhaustive it's still within the context of the nasa search and not a credit report further you know the mr astonishes actions serve a valuable public purpose and that is a public policy in fact and that is not to bring litigation unnecessarily that is not going to benefit anybody and if one could imagine attorneys being prevented for from doing asset searches because private  investigators expert witnesses court reporters or somebody else might do something in violation of the law then they're going to have to bring litigation in each and every case that walks in the door because they can't investigate the facts they can't determine whether there's insurance they can't find out if there's assets worth collecting and nobody knows the number of cases that don't that aren't filed because the defendant is judgment proof but i can tell you in my practice it's very substantial and so here we have an attorney who was attempting to facilitate this important public policy and to penalize someone who was not in the credit industry who does not supervise the private investigator who did not cloaked him with any apparent authority like the bennett law firm did in the miers case is is too is unfair and contrary to the ultimate goals him and that and by the way the state of california has held that that's a legitimate belief second credit reports do contain information about assets that's why private investigators look to them that's why congress allows cases where people contemplate litigation in other words there are a lot of cases where it would be malpractise or negligent of a lawyer to start a lawsuit without checking whether hundred laws might be an exaggeration but if the lawyer asked advise the investigator not to violate every single law how do you get a grip on you know the scope of that i think most lawyers have a sense that there are certain purposes for which you can get a credit report actually interestingly in this case they said oh by the way you can look at mr chandler's information as well because we have a legitimate purpose because he might be sick reading assets or they might have joint accounts or that sort of thing so that conveyed the idea that look we know that there are certain things that are off limits and they're not off limits in this case