good morning court my name is attorney robert mitchell i am appearing on behalf of the appellant's fings ruud van ash for purposes of brevity i'm going to refer to my clients as fings rude be a little bit easier for the court i think  for purposes of logistics just some general housekeeping i'm going to try to limit my argument regarding the collection agency in this matter asset to five minutes my colleague this is their own hutchison is going to then address the consumer protection a claims which fall into the washington state claims against the hospital i think she's going to try to limit hers to five minutes as well and they want to try to pervert preserve five minutes for rebuttal that will probably share so with the right your choice but  claims against asset the collection agency the paramount claim it issue is the fair debt collection practices act the fair debt collection practices act is a federal statute that prohibits debt collectors from doing certain things like threatening to collect debts that the consumer does not owe or attempting to collect debts that the consumer does not owe the judge dismissed these claims at summary judgment so this court will take a don't know overview of these claims and we need to keep in mind effie and then just the reasonableness standard the findings of viewing facts in the light that are not most favorable to the nonmoving party so as far as the bonafide air defense luckily for us here today this court has already ruled on this very same fact pattern repeatedly mostly recently in mccall up and what the bonafide air defense says it is the only affirmative defense under the statute and what it says is that it needs to be narrowly construed it has two elements both of which need to be affirmative prove the first is that the collector lacked intent to commit the alleged misconduct and the second element is that the collector maintains procedures that are reasonably adapted to avoid the specific error at issue now in this case the defendant asset did not even plead to the second element they simply cite to the statutory language that it requires maintenance of reasonable procedures and then they just default to an argument that they reasonably relied on their client's representations so the representations of the original and what should asset have done in order to fulfill the the second part of the defense they wanted to should hear asset needed to articulate affirmatively articulate in affirmatively prove that they maintain reasonable procedures that are adapted and in this case for example what would that have entailed on the facts that they had a procedure or a policy in place that they actually followed in this specific case that would have prevented the error at issue is that answer the court's question well not really i mean so you're telling i don't want to know about policy in the abstract i'm asking on the facts of this case one of the ones as a supposed to do when she says i don't know this money would just make sure that the facts are clear and it wasn't just her it was also her insurance company sent over documented proof that she did not owe this money ok so you know that's soon as soon as they're on notice that hey wait a minute they say the money is not owed what's assets posed to do i have seen a lot of collection agency suspend that account they place it over into let's call it an escrow it's off to the side while they actually conduct a reasonable investigation what i've seen a lot of collection agencies do is stop collecting when there is a serious question about the validity of and but the but they're supposed to do something they're not supposed to just keep trying to collect it correct and other means the representation is insufficient the representation from legacy is not of that at that point at that point you know that's something else that's absolutely correct this court has found out in clarke they found it in right and we found it in mccullough that simply relying on that representation alone is insufficient in writing this court stated once the alleged  says wait a minute i don't know it absolutely at that point when we moved from section g of the velo validation of verification portion of the statute to the actual offense portions of the statutes in af strict liability as attaches at that point and at that  need to actually show procedures and not just a reasonable reliance record found that the fact that the creditor provided accurate information in the past cannot in and of itself establish the reliance or the  the maintenance of procedures that debt collector also has an affirmative obligation to prove the maintenance of reasonable procedures in this case they didn't even a legit the only allegation in this summary judgment is that they relied on the original if the second portion of this is that in order to take advantage of that and get out of jail free card under the bonafide error defense you were also required to only present the balance that was represented to you from the creditor and in this case the iranians balance it turned out to be wrong but the balance that was represented to asset was a fifty three hundred dollar and some change debt assets final bill after there had been many disputes assets final bill was about almost eight hundred dollars more than that because they attached interest and that gets us to to the record case where the collector and added extra amounts to the debt and also get you to buy that is plus yes oh wow and she's going to start barking at me i'm going to wrap it up real quick thing your owners and i appreciate the time warning the other part is that they claim that there was reasonable reliance on the credit or the consumer claims that the reliance was unreasonable because she disputed the insurance company disputed her attorney disputed and they had documents the collector had documents in their possessions proving or at least suggesting that this account was not correct so in their reasoning you better let your colleague take it thank  and the substantive underlying law that the trial court in correctly applied is the washington state consumer protection act which is a broad remedial statute that is to be liberally construed to affect the protection of the public i will do address the issues of injury followed by unfair and deceptive injury occurred here as soon as they were sent the bill for more than they owed injury is distinct from damages you don't need to prove that any actual dollar amount left your pocket to be injured for purposes of the consumer protection act but what i have some trouble with on this theory is that every billing error would turn into a c p a claim under your theory and is that your position that's not our position actually a a billing error that is so persistent here and has the origin of a deceptive act absolutely makes a prime a facia case under the consumer protection when you call i but does that mean well what happened was legacy hospital used some creative accounting when they got the back payment and from kaiser they chose to short someone's account and then that person got sent to collection and now we don't understand them why is that deceptive within the meaning of the statute i mean what they intended to do but didn't do as well charge of five thousand dollars just so the eight hundred and  thousand dollars will go through and then we're going to go back and creditor just to kind of we can wipe it off the books but they forgot to do the second thing which results in the iranians bill why is that deceptive in within the meaning of the statute state supreme court described in pinera you don't need to intend to deceive someone for your act to be deceptive nearly needs to be a representation or even a mission or a practice all of those can be deceptive for purposes of the consumer protection act in they they also give you this leeway under washington law where the plaintiff or the aggrieved person would follow up did that happen here  by the far hospital following up that well basically saying there's there's a problem there's an error here what happened here was they as you know that the appellant repeatedly disputed and some of the times that she called into customer service at legacy they were telling her a completely different reason why they were claiming such a large bill when they had the customer service people had the p showing that the insurance had paid the full amount right there in front of them and they're telling her something different if that's not deceptive it is at least unfair and it's always supposed to be broadly in liberally construed to benefit the consumer are willfully blind to what's in front of them and continue to maintain the erroneous yeah that's that's the argument and that's why that's so if not deceptive at least unfair correct your honor that that is an extent of of unfairness and extent of deception that makes this a particularly egregious consumer protection act case the origin of the whole problem was not just an isolated error it was a decision of how the hospital chose to treat this accounting problem and then the callousness that they showed this appellant this particular consumer again and again after they knew that they had this problem is is something that should go to a jury the damages as the washington state supreme court has said under claim those do go to the jury we've established the injury do the expenses that she incurred meaning the investigation expenses which as we know from penn ag are you know damages under the consumer protection act the investigation expenses the the time the last vacation time the last stipend that her husband did not get his firefighter shift all of those are concrete and it would be up to the jury to determine which of those flowed from the the unfair and deceptive acts of the hospital would you like to reserve the remaining time i would thank you your honor good morning your honor may i please the court i'm jeffrey house and i'm the attorney for asset systems i'd like ten minutes for my argument i'll reserve five for legacy argument that's ok with your honor this case presents the court with a novel issue of a undiscoverable error by a collection agency but immune and discover well there's no way nothing in the record that would show that how asset could have discovered them a stake that occurred by legacy the mistake that  hasn't even try asset there's nothing that asset could try to do it has said call back to laos and say we might have a problem here they did it with regards to the i don't my statement the i'd my statement was exactly what asset was asking for so there was nothing that asset could have done to discover this particular air the item my statement from legacy had the amount that legacy had credited for the insurance coverage in the me ask you this what does the record show in the summary judgment sense of the evidence favoring them what does the evidence show as to what asset did when the plaintiffs says i don't know this money did they call called legacy to ask if there was a problem so they just relied on the information they already had no your honor if if i if i may if i can go back in the records what show is yeah that is that for the first few there was almost two year or so legacy was sending out statements with this amount with the amount that had been credited to the to the debtor there was no response from the debtor assets at their first notice in two thousand and fourteen to the debt to the debtor the debtor didn't respond so two thousand and sixteen asset contacts the debtor and the and the debtor says i didn't receive the first notice so asset sends its first notice where it hasn't been disputed by the debtor had all during this period of time on seven days later the debtor that contacted legacy and says this amount is wrong and legacy th did the investigation and it turned out an asset after that part period of time asset received an itemized statement from legacy that confirmed the same amount that they had when they when it was first disputed in january of two thousand and sixteen there had been no change so the time that legacy finally wrote the account in and found a mistake was because the explanation benefits was sent in august of two thousand and sixteen after assets letter well after assets letter and was sent by two to asset who then forwarded the explanation of benefits to legacy to review at that point legacy discovered the problem so there was no no way that that asset could have discovered this computer glitch that was internal with legacy there was a credit for the kaiser insurance there the problem is that it wasn't a credit for enough and the reason for that was because legacies received from highs or they received a number of accounts in this case the particular account for the escher count there was one hundred sixty accounts that were paid by kaiser under that scenario what the problem was in the legacies information shows is that the kaiser information didn't match up to the amounts that were owed by those hundred sixty debtors and so therefore the way they were they don't know when we understand that part but now i'm much more interested in terms of relied on a legacy and legacy and how much contact did they have an essential going back to legacy and saying hey there's a dispute here well they stayed out of it primarily and while they stayed out of it did they continue to try to enforce the debt not not not initially your honor well it was i don't know i'm not listening is kind of a weasel word did after they knew that there was a dispute and after they were they were staying out of it did they make any attempts to collect the debt from january of two the answer is yes yeah and they even made according to their evidence threatened lawsuit that they made it but only after from january of two thousand and sixteen through march of two thousand and sixteen  the debtor was working with legacy because of the dispute on the debt at which point legacy did not find the dispute on the debt and that in the the legacies only records show that legacy didn't find it and confirm that the amount of the debt it was in march of two thousand and sixteen that a communication occur that was asking for recovery of the debt so it wasn't discoverable by asset at any point as a matter of fact it wasn't discoverable by it's not really a follow up it's an inquiry you know there in january of two thousand and sixteen the these are the things within the one year statute limitation result in january of two thousand and sixteen because she didn't receive the first notice assets in the first notice to miss is that in june of two thousand and sixteen mr ash had not communicated and did not communicate with asset at all in june of two thousand and sixteen the first notice to mr ash was sent they have to send that within five days of the initial communication it wasn't a follow up communication as you would generally have you know if you look at the wording of the language it was a first notice unless you notify this office within thirty days that you dispute the debt that's what it was and that's why one was sent to mr ash and one was sent to mrs s because you can't communicate less you if you you have to send that letter within five days of the initial community and then you say it's not until the august sixth two thousand and sixteen period that you're really on notice that there is some problem in august of two thousand and sixteen the explanation of benefits was received by and i believe it was asset and asset forwarded that to legacy we're on notice at that point we do nothing after that point as a matter of fact legacy cancels that at that point returns the hundred dollars that had been paid by  mrs ash and also told tells us to cancel the other three hundred dollars that would have been doing had it been properly credited by kaiser so all of those things occur this is a situation similar to creditor the debt collector will not be liable for any errors on the other hand the bona fide air defense will not shield a debt collector whose reliance on the creditors representation isn't reasonable or who represents to the consumer a debt amount that is different from the creditors report in this case that that was also a similar case where the summary judgment had been granted to the defendants just like this particular case what the court eventually found was there was evidence put on by the clarks they at the rep reliance on that particular creditor was on reasonable and because that was that evidence was put on and because the defendants didn't put on evidence contrary to that there was a question of fact as to whether the reliance was reasonable that's why it was sent back the cases of reichert and mccullough are quite different from that they were cases in which the plaintiff received summary judgment and the claim for was that the error was discoverable so in each of those cases it was with regards to the writer case the two hundred twenty five dollars charge was apparent on the letter that was sent out so just because you rely on the creditor when it's on the face   please the court aaron ranchi for the i guess the hospital the overarching question that the district court was faced with regards to legacy in this case was if a debtor receives and she knows it's erroneous and she know she has a balance due and she chooses to ignore the bill not make any effort to call the creditors attention to the error and not make any effort to pay the balance that she know she  sue the creditor when the creditor eventually sends the account to collections the district court correctly found that that is not a proper use of the c p a what you supposed to do when she knows that she owes four hundred dollars and she gets a bill for essentially five thousand dollars she obviously knows this is a mistake and and i must say i'm bringing a little bit of my own common sense of experience to this crazy bills all the time from the hospitals and from the insurance companies and so on that are not real bills look like they are but they're going to correct the minute we get this these papers with these funny numbers from health care providers all the time and my experience is i just have to wait until he sent me the one that says actually this is what you call me and i think she behaved the way many people do when they get crazy bills from hospitals well this is get from the insurance company is what says it's not a bill what i get from the hospital is what you're supposed to pay and i don't disagree that you know i might have done something similar to what she did in that situation but what i wouldn't i would know it i'm taking the risk that this account gets sent to collections somewhere down the road she specifically testified that she knew it would be sent to collections if she didn't do anything about it and what i would not do is sue the hospital when that happened because i thought well but what happens is not just that she doesn't pay she doesn't pay and then she bring suit she doesn't pay then the hospital sends to collection she objects in the hospital takes a really long time to sort out its own mistake and meanwhile she's being threatened with a lawsuit by legacy she rest retain a lawyer and was never and the underlying problem is your mistake she was never threatened with a lawsuit but i  communications she was asked if asset ever threatened her with a lawsuit and she said no now she did say that they mentioned the possibility and she felt that there could be a lawsuit coming which is the way collections works  i agree that it took a long time and legacy agrees it took a long time to sort this out and legacy will be the first to tell you that the customer service in this case was not what it should have been and that was why they they refunded one hundred dollars payment that she  waived another three hundred dollars that she undisputedly owed however poor customer service and taking too long to fix a billing error is not a consumer protection act violation and it is something that happened in the nature of the error that happened here that after the fact legacy realized wow if this error happened there would be no way for a customer service people to see it and that's what took so long as soon as it got to dale land time to get there taking a long time to sort out a billing error is not a consumer protection act violation and for that reason i asked the court respectfully to affirm the trial court's correct decision thank you references to august of two thousand and sixteen and the way that this case actually unfolded was in march of two thousand and sixteen the insurance sent and be over to the hospital that said this debt has been paid all but four hundred dollars that was in march of two thousand sixteen ok if the collection agency had been communicating with the creditor as they said that they did and relying on the creditor between march of two thousand and sixteen when that he'll be is in in their own file showing that the debt was paid and the collection notice in june of two thousand and sixteen which is three months later they would have learned but they obviously either were not caught in communication with their own client as they say that they were or that communication was deficient because the proof from the insurance company that this debt was paid was in their files in march of two thousand and sixteen it was in legacies files in legacies files correct what legacy did with it we were unaware of the threat of the law suit is the last thing that i'm going to touch on and then you go back to sarah palin their own collection notes show that the plan that the plaintiff mrs fangs read on ash believe that she was threatened with a lawsuit their own collection notes show that she called and said i have to get this tak care of because they're threatening to file a lawsuit against me those notations are in the record at thirty two thirty three and thirty four the thirty two and thirty three is the reference to the insurance payments that were made thirty three and thirty four the record i will quickly address legacy's arguments both of them were rejected by the washington state supreme court and now and basically just because you might owe four hundred dollars it doesn't mean we can demand five thousand it doesn't mean we demand seven thousand it is reasonable for people to wait for the crazy bills to go away so the real one comes in the mail this is thank you advantage testified we are one seventy three in the record that he was a reasonable assumption for her to make but nag protects the person in that situation it says a person's blameworthiness with respect to insurance coverage is not relevant deciding whether collection practices unfair deceptive the focus is on you know the conduct of the collection agency of the creditor and it was the bill can still be deceptive if in the act of asking a person for five thousand dollars you're spending time and money running around trying to find out what's going on and protect your interests and ag did have situations where the people were at fault and you know had some responsibility for some of the money that was being demanded of them but that did not make the communications to them not deceptive just because part of it is true it does not mean that you can still be  and injured by those collection efforts thank you thank you your honor but the last verse is legacy and asset is submitted and well take