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Nature of Suit Code: 480
Nature of Suit: Consumer Credit
Cause of Action: 

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In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 14-2864

ANDREA M. CHILDRESS,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

EXPERIAN INFORMATION SOLUTIONS, INC.,

Defendant-Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division.

No. 1:12-cv-01529-TWP-DKL — Tanya Walton Pratt, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED MAY 27, 2015 — DECIDED JUNE 23, 2015

____________________

Before POSNER, MANION, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. The Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 

U.S.C. §§ 1681 et seq., provides that “if any case arising or 

filed under Title 11 [the Bankruptcy Code] is withdrawn by 

the consumer before a final judgment, the consumer reporting agency shall include in the report that such case or filing 

was withdrawn upon receipt of documentation certifying 

such withdrawal.” 15 U.S.C. § 1681c(d)(1). The Act further

provides that “whenever a consumer reporting agency preCase: 14-2864 Document: 79 Filed: 06/23/2015 Pages: 5
2 No. 14-2864

pares a consumer report it shall follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of the information concerning the individual about whom the report 

relates.” § 1681e(b).

The plaintiff and her husband (they are now divorced, 

and he is not participating in this litigation) had filed a petition for bankruptcy under Chapter 13 of the Bankruptcy 

Code, but later they filed a timely motion in the bankruptcy 

court to dismiss the petition, and the court granted the motion. That was in 2006. The defendant, a consumer creditreporting agency, receives copies of judgments in bankruptcy cases from Lexis (which in turn retrieves them from 

PACER—short for Public Access to Court Electronic Records, a service that provides online access to federal court 

and docket information) and notes them in the credit reports 

of persons who have filed bankruptcy petitions. The agency 

reported the plaintiff’s bankruptcy petition “dismissed,” 

which was what the judgment terminating the bankruptcy 

case had caused to be done.

In 2009 the plaintiff’s lawyer demanded that the agency 

remove all reference to her bankruptcy because it had been 

dismissed at her behest. The agency refused. In 2012 she told 

the agency: “my bankruptcy was not dismissed. It was voluntarily withdrawn prior to plan approval.” The agency 

then purged the reference to the bankruptcy from her file, 

but did so because it would soon be seven years since she 

had filed her bankruptcy petition and the agency deletes reference to a bankruptcy in a consumer credit report after 7 

years have elapsed since the petition for bankruptcy was 

filed. (The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires that reporting 

agencies purge bankruptcy records 10 years after the filing 

Case: 14-2864 Document: 79 Filed: 06/23/2015 Pages: 5
No. 14-2864 3

date, but the major credit-reporting agencies purge them after 7 years instead.) There is no indication that had it not 

been for the lapse of time the agency would have added to 

her credit report a notation that the petition for bankruptcy 

had been withdrawn. But since the bankruptcy was purged 

from her file we needn’t decide whether her letter alerting 

the reporting agency that the dismissal had been voluntary 

would count as “documentation certifying ... withdrawal” 

of the petition for bankruptcy. 15 U.S.C. § 1681c(d)(1).

Her suit charges that by failing to report from the outset

(that is, in 2006) that the bankruptcy petition had been voluntarily withdrawn, the agency had willfully violated the 

provisions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act that we cited earlier. She seeks the damages that the Act provides, in 15 

U.S.C. § 1681n(a), for willful violations of its provisions. And 

she seeks to sue on behalf not only of herself but also on behalf of all similarly situated persons. But the district court 

granted summary judgment in favor of the credit agency 

without deciding whether to certify a class.

The grant of summary judgment was correct. The key 

provisions of the two sections of the Fair Credit Reporting 

Act that we quoted at the outset of this opinion are that the 

agency must report that the bankruptcy petition was withdrawn “upon receipt of documentation certifying such 

withdrawal” and must “follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of the information concerning the” person who had filed for bankruptcy. In 2006, 

when the plaintiff’s bankruptcy petition was withdrawn, no 

documentation certifying such withdrawal was or had been 

submitted to the agency. The plaintiff argues that the agency 

shouldn’t (despite the statute) require such documentation, 

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4 No. 14-2864

but instead should monitor all dismissals of bankruptcy petitions and investigate to determine whether they were dismissed at the request of the petitioner. A Lexis representative testified, however, that the variance in bankruptcy 

docket entries from bankruptcy court to bankruptcy court is

so great—and there are 94 bankruptcy courts—that Lexis has

been unable to develop reliable computer algorithms for determining the basis on which a particular bankruptcy case 

has been dismissed. What the plaintiff wants would thus require a live human being, with at least a little legal training, 

to review every bankruptcy dismissal and classify it as either 

voluntary or involuntary. That’s a lot to ask—too much 

when one considers the alternative, which is for the agency 

to act only upon receiving information from the bankruptcy 

petitioner indicating that the petition has indeed been voluntarily dismissed. That approach is not only consistent with 

but implied by the phrase “upon receipt of documentation 

certifying such withdrawal.” 

We noted at the outset of this opinion that the Fair Credit 

Reporting Act requires only that the procedures adopted by 

credit-reporting agencies be “reasonable” in relation to the 

goal of accurate credit reporting. The procedure urged by 

the plaintiff is not “reasonable.” It would put an enormous 

burden on the consumer credit-reporting agencies. Or so it 

seems; it was the plaintiff’s burden to establish the reasonableness of her proposed procedure. 

There is more that is wrong with her case. Every bankruptcy case that is “withdrawn” at the request of the petitioner is dismissed. There was therefore no inaccuracy in the 

statement in the plaintiff’s credit report that her bankruptcy 

petition had been dismissed. Nor is the fact that such a petiCase: 14-2864 Document: 79 Filed: 06/23/2015 Pages: 5
No. 14-2864 5

tion is dismissed at the petitioner’s request a reliable sign 

that she decided not to stiff her creditors by seeking a discharge—she may have dismissed the petition because she 

thought she’d be denied a discharge. To make a consumer 

credit report fully precise would require an investigation 

that went far beyond merely noting whether the petition for 

bankruptcy had been dismissed at the petitioner’s request. 

The plaintiff does not want that; nor has she shown that it 

would be a feasible task to lay on the consumer creditreporting agencies.

AFFIRMED

Case: 14-2864 Document: 79 Filed: 06/23/2015 Pages: 5