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LAW OFFICES OF JIBRAEL S. HINDI, PLLC

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www.JibraelLaw.com

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA

CASE NO.: 0:20-cv-61554

SANDRA GOMEZ,

Plaintiff,

v.

HARRIS & HARRIS, LTD., INC.,

Defendant.

_______________________________________/

COMPLAINT AND DEMAND FOR JURY TRIAL

Plaintiff Sandra Gomez (“Plaintiff”) sues Defendant Harris & Harris, Ltd., Inc. 

(“Defendant”) for violating § 1692e(2)(A) of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”).

JURISDICTION AND VENUE

1. Jurisdiction of this Court arises under 15 U.S.C. §1692k(d), 28 U.S.C. § 1331, and 

28 U.S.C. § 1337.

2. Venue in this District is proper because Plaintiff resides here, Defendant transacts 

business here, and the complained conduct of Defendant occurred here.

PARTIES

3. Plaintiff is a natural person, and a citizen of the State of Florida, residing in Broward 

County, Florida.

4. Defendant is a Illinois corporation, with its principal place of business located in 

Chicago, Illinois.

5. Defendant engages in interstate commerce by regularly using telephone and mail 

in a business whose principal purpose is the collection of debts.

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6. At all times material, Defendant was acting as a debt collector in respect to the 

collection of Plaintiff’s debts. 

DEMAND FOR JURY TRIAL

7. Plaintiff, respectfully, demands a trial by jury on all counts and issues so triable.

FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS

8. On March 29, 2019, Plaintiff suffered an accident and related injuries in the course 

and scope of Plaintiff’s employment that required medical treatment and/or services (the “WorkInjury”).

9. On March 29, 2019, the same day of the Work-Injury, Broward Health Medical 

Center (“BHMC”) provided Plaintiff with a portion of the required medical services needed to 

treat the Work-Injury, whereby the only medical services provided to Plaintiff by BHMC were for 

the treatment of the Work-Injury. 

10. At the time BHMC provided its respective medical services to Plaintiff, Plaintiff 

informed BHMC that the sought treatment was for the Work-Injury.

11. BHMC charged a fee for the provision of its (BHMC’s) respective medical services 

for treatment of the Work-Injury (the “Consumer Debt”). 

12. The Consumer Debt arose from Plaintiff’s work-related accident and injuries.

13. On a date better known by Defendant, Defendant began attempting to collect the 

Consumer Debt from Plaintiff. 

14. Defendant is a business entity engaged in the business of soliciting consumer debts 

for collection.

15. Defendant is a business entity engaged in the business of collecting consumer debts.

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16. Defendant regularly collects or attempts to collect, directly or indirectly, debts 

owed or due or asserted to be owed or due another.

17. Defendant is registered with the Florida Office of Financial Regulation as a 

“Consumer Collection Agency.” 

18. Defendant’s “Consumer Collection Agency” license number is CCA0900582. 

19. Defendant maintains all the records specified in Rule 69V-180.080, Florida 

Administrative Code.

20. The records specified by Rule 69V-180.080, Florida Administrative Code, of which 

Defendant does maintain, are current to within one week of the current date. 

21. On a date better known to Defendant, Defendant sent a collection letter, internally 

dated August 01, 2019, to Plaintiff (the “Collection Letter”) in an attempt to collect the Consumer 

Debt. A copy of the Collection Letter is attached hereto as Exhibit “A.” 

22. The Collection Letter is a communication from Defendant to Plaintiff in connection 

with the collection of a debt. 

23. The Collection Letter represents an action to collect a debt by Defendant.

24. The Collection Letter demanded payment from Plaintiff in the amount of $1,445.

25. Upon Plaintiff’s receipt of the Collection Letter, Plaintiff reviewed and otherwise 

read the Collection Letter. 

26. In so doing, Plaintiff realized that the debt sought by the Collection Letter, i.e., the 

Consumer Debt, arose from treatment afforded to Plaintiff on March 29, 2019, for the workplace 

injury sustained by Plaintiff that same day. 

27. Upon this realization, Plaintiff became visibly upset and emotionally distraught. 

Despite having been so egregiously injured at work that Plaintiff needed to seek medical treatment, 

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www.JibraelLaw.com

the Collection Letter subjected Plaintiff to further undue pain and suffering by way of unlawful 

debt collection and wasted Plaintiff’s time.

28. In addition to causing Plaintiff actual harm, the Collection Letter wasted Plaintiff’s 

time. Plaintiff would not have wasted time reading the Collection Letter, Plaintiff would not have 

wasted time trying to understand why Plaintiff was the target of wrongful and otherwise unlawful 

collection activity, and Plaintiff would not have wasted time deliberating what to do about the 

Collection Letter. At minimum, all such wasted time would have been completely avoided had 

Defendant not sent the Collection Letter to Plaintiff – but such is not the case – and the time 

Defendant caused Plaintiff to waste cannot be undone. 

29. More importantly, had the Collection Letter not falsely represented payment of the 

Consumer Debt as Plaintiff’s direct, personal problem, Plaintiff’s suffering would have been 

limited to the Work Injury – but such is also not the case. 

30. Notwithstanding the time which the Collection Letter caused Plaintiff to waste, 

Defendant, by and through the Collection Letter, inflicted frustration, pain, confusion, and distrust, 

as well as emotional turmoil, onto Plaintiff, of which compound what Plaintiff endured due to the 

Work Injury. All of the aforementioned injuries suffered by Plaintiff constitute a concrete harm.

ARTICLE III STANDING

31. “Under settled precedent, the ‘irreducible constitutional minimum’ of standing 

consists of three elements: the plaintiff must have suffered an injury in fact, the defendant must 

have caused that injury, and a favorable decision must be likely to redress it. The party invoking 

the jurisdiction of a federal court bears the burden of establishing these elements to the extent 

required at each stage of the litigation.” Trichell v. Midland Credit Mgmt., 964 F.3d 990, *7 (11th 

Cir. 2020) (citing and quoting Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61 (1992)). 

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www.JibraelLaw.com

Simplified, Article III standing has three leading components: (1) injury in fact; (2) causation; and 

(3) redressability. 

32. “The ‘foremost’ standing requirement is injury in fact.” Trichell at *8 (emphasis 

added) (quoting Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env't, 523 U.S. 83, 103 (1998)). 

33. “An injury in fact consists of ‘an invasion of a legally protected interest’ that is 

both ‘concrete and particularized’ and ‘actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.’” 

Trichell at *8 (emphasis added) (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. 555 at 560). Simplified, injury in fact

has four components: an (1) actual or imminent, and not conjectural or hypothetical, (2) invasion 

of a legally protected interest (3) that is concreate and (4) particularized. See Spokeo, 136 S. Ct. 

1540 at 1548 (“To establish injury in fact, a plaintiff must show that he or she suffered ‘an invasion 

of a legally protected interest’ that is ‘concrete and particularized’ and ‘actual or imminent, not 

conjectural or hypothetical.’” (quoting Lujan, 504 U. S. 555 at 560)); see also Cooper v. Atl. Credit 

& Fin., No. 19-12177, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 23719, at *8 (11th Cir. July 28, 2020) (“To establish 

standing, a plaintiff must instead ‘show that the violation harmed ... the underlying concrete 

interest that Congress sought to protect.’” (emphasis added) (quoting Casillas v. Madison Ave. 

Assocs., 926 F.3d 329, 333 (7th Cir. 2019)).

34. “To be particularized, the injury ‘must affect the plaintiff in a personal and 

individual way.’ [quoting Lujan, 504 U. S. 555 at 560 n.1]. In other words, ‘the injury in fact test 

requires more than an injury to a cognizable interest. It requires that the party seeking review be 

himself among the injured.’ [quoting Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 734-35 (1972)]. The 

same principle holds true when the plaintiff invokes a statutory cause of action: ‘where a statute 

confers new legal rights on a person, that person will have Article III standing to sue where the 

facts establish a concrete, particularized, and personal injury to that person as a result of the 

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violation of the newly created legal rights.’” Trichell at *17 (emphasis added) (quoting Palm Beach 

Golf Center-Boca, Inc. v. John G. Sarris, D.D.S., P.A., 781 F.3d 1245, 1251 (11th Cir. 2015)).

35. “A ‘concrete’ injury must be ‘de facto’ – that is, it must be ‘real, and not abstract.’” 

Trichell at *8 (emphasis added) (quoting Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540, 1548 (2016)). 

“As a general matter, tangible injuries qualify as concrete.” Trichell at *8 (quoting Spokeo, 136

S. Ct. 1540 at 1549). Allegations of either having “made any payments in response to” a 

challenged collection letter “or even ... wasted time or money in determining whether to do so” 

are tangible and otherwise concrete injuries. Trichell at *8 (emphasis added). 

SCOPE OF TRICHELL

36. In Trichell, the Eleventh Circuit pointedly grappled the injury in fact component of 

Article III standing – and in particular – whether the intangible injuries alleged by the plaintiffs 

were capable of satiating the overarching injury in fact requirement. The Trichell court observed 

the injuries alleged by the plaintiffs as intangible because, although claiming to have received

misleading and unfair collection letters that violated their rights under 15 U.S.C. § 1692e 

(generally prohibiting misleading communications in connection with the collection of a consumer 

debt) and § 1692f (generally prohibiting unfair communications in connection with the collection 

of a consumer debt), neither plaintiff alleged to have been misled or otherwise unfairly mislead 

by their respective collection letter. 

37. Without allegations indicating that the plaintiffs themselves were misled, and 

because the specific section of the FDCPA advanced by the plaintiffs only prohibited misleading 

communications, any ability to satiate Article III standing by the plaintiffs quickly crumbled. Put 

differently, because the plaintiffs’ claim was that the underlying collection letters were misleading 

and/or otherwise unfair, in light of the fact that neither plaintiff alleged to have been misled

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themselves: [1] there was no palpable actual injury, but instead, merely the risk of an imminent 

injury, of which the court found insufficiently imminent, and [2] there was no sufficiently concrete 

or particularized injury because the plaintiffs did not allege more than an injury to a cognizable 

interest (i.e., the plaintiffs only alleged the collection letters could unlawfully mislead the least 

sophisticated consumer, and not that the plaintiffs themselves were unlawfully mislead). 

38. Simply put, Trichell confirms that, to the extent a plaintiff is seeking to enforce an 

invasion of a statutorily created interest (e.g., § 1692e of the FDCPA which generally prohibits 

misleading communications in connection with the collection of a debt from a debt collectors), a 

plaintiff cannot manifest the necessary injury in fact unless the plaintiff alleges a concrete, 

particularized, and personal injury caused by the violation of said statutorily created right. 

39. With respect to Plaintiff and the immediate action, Trichell affords some utility to 

the analysis of whether Plaintiff has sustained and alleged the necessary injury in fact. In large, 

however, Trichell is of limited application, as the focus of Trichell was the sufficiency of the 

intangible injury alleged by the plaintiffs. 

40. Here, unlike the plaintiffs of Trichell, Plaintiff has sustained tangible injuries, see 

supra ¶¶ 21-30, the likes of which are objectively concrete. See Trichell at *8 (exemplifying 

allegations of either having “made any payments in response to” a challenged collection letter “or 

even ... wasted time or money in determining whether to do so” as tangible and otherwise concrete 

injuries for purposes of Article III standing). 

41. Further, as alleged below, because Defendant’s violation of 15 U.S.C. § 

1692e(2)(A) (of which condemns, among other things, false representations regarding the 

character or amount of the underlying debt) caused tangible injury to Plaintiff, it is without 

question that Plaintiff’s actual injuries are sufficiently particularized. Thus, Plaintiff has 

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sufficiently established the injury in fact component of Article III standing, leaving only causation 

and redressability – the likes of which are equally satisfied, as a decision in Plaintiff’s favor will 

afford Plaintiff both the actual and statutory damages sought herein and, but for the Collection 

Letter, Plaintiff would not have sustained the complained of concrete injuries.

COUNT I.

VIOLATION OF 15 U.S.C. § 1692e(2)(A)

42. Plaintiff incorporates by reference paragraphs 1-41 of this Complaint as though 

fully stated herein.

43. Pursuant to Fla. Stat. § 440.13(2)(a), an injured employee is entitled to “such 

medically necessary remedial treatment, care, and attendance for such period as the nature of the 

injury or the process of the recovery may require....” 

44. Pursuant to Fla. Stat. § 440.13(13)(a), “[a] health care provider may not collect or 

receive a fee from an injured employee within this state, except as otherwise provided by this 

chapter. Such providers have recourse against the employee or carrier for payment for services 

rendered in accordance with this chapter.” 

45. An employee is shielded from liability in any dispute between the employer or 

carrier and health care provider regarding reimbursement for the employee’s authorized medical 

or psychological treatment. See generally Fla. Stat. § 440.13.

46. Section 1692e of the FDCPA prohibits the use of “false, deceptive, or misleading 

representation or means in connection with the collection of any debt.” 15 U.S.C. §1692e. The 

sixteen subsections of § 1692e set forth a non-exhaustive list of practices that fall within this ban, 

including, but not limited to: “[t]he false representation of the character, amount, or legal status 

of any debt.” 15 U.S.C. § 1692e(2)(A). (emphasis added).

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LAW OFFICES OF JIBRAEL S. HINDI, PLLC

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47. As stated above, Defendant mailed the Collection Letter to Plaintiff in an attempt 

to collect the Consumer Debt. The Collection Letter falsely represents that Plaintiff is responsible

for the repayment of the Consumer Debt. Here, Plaintiff is not liable or otherwise responsible for

the payment of the medical services rendered by BHMC, as such medical services were rendered 

to Plaintiff as a result of a work-related injury sustained by Plaintiff. 

48. Defendant by and through the Collection Letter, falsely represents the character of 

the Consumer Debt, in that, the Collection Letter falsely represents Consumer Debt as a debt which 

Plaintiff is solely responsible and/or otherwise obligated to pay. 

49. Further, by and through the Collection Letter, Defendant falsely represents the 

amount of the Consumer Debt, in that, the $1,445 sought by the Collection Letter exceeds the 

amount which the creditor, BHMC, is entitled pursuant to the fee schedules and/or guidelines for 

services rendered to injured workers such as Plaintiff. 

50. Thus, by and through the Collection Letter, Defendant violated § 1692e(2)(A) of 

the FDCPA by falsely representing the character of the Consumer Debt, as well as by falsely 

representing the amount of the Consumer Debt.

51. WHEREFORE, Plaintiff, respectfully, requests this Court to enter a judgment 

against Defendant, awarding Plaintiff the following relief: 

(a) Actual damages as provided by 15 U.S.C. §1692k;

(b) Statutory damages as provided by 15 U.S.C. §1692k; 

(c) Costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees pursuant to 15 U.S.C. §1692k; and

(d) Any other relief that this Court deems appropriate under the circumstances.

[REMAINDER OF PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK]

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LAW OFFICES OF JIBRAEL S. HINDI, PLLC

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www.JibraelLaw.com

DATED: July 31, 2020

Respectfully Submitted,

 /s/ Jibrael S. Hindi .

JIBRAEL S. HINDI, ESQ.

Florida Bar No.: 118259

E-mail: jibrael@jibraellaw.com

THOMAS J. PATTI, ESQ.

Florida Bar No.: 118377

E-mail: tom@jibraellaw.com

THE LAW OFFICES OF JIBRAEL S. HINDI

110 SE 6th Street, Suite 1744

Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301

Phone: 954-907-1136

PAUL A. HERMAN, ESQ.

Florida Bar No.: 405175

E-mail: paul@consumeradvocatelaw.com

CONSUMER ADVOCATES LAW GROUP, PLLC

4801 Linton Blvd., Suite 11A-560

Delray Beach, Florida 33445

Phone: (561) 236-8851

JOEL A. BROWN, ESQ.

Florida Bar No.: 66575

E-mail: joel.brown@friedmanandbrown.com

FRIEDMAN & BROWN, LLC

3323 NW 55th Street

Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33309

Phone: (954) 966-0111 

COUNSEL FOR PLAINTIFF

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