In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 19-1737

RICARDO A. GOMEZ and DEBORA GOMEZ,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

CAVALRY PORTFOLIO SERVICES, LLC, and CAVALRY SPV I,

LLC,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 14-cv-09420 — Andrea R. Wood, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED DECEMBER 12, 2019 — DECIDED JUNE 19, 2020

____________________

Before BAUER, EASTERBROOK, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges.

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. In 2009 Ricardo and Debora

Gomez stopped paying their debt on a credit card issued by 

Bank of America. Later that year the Bank concluded that 

collection was unlikely and treated the account as a bad 

debt; it stopped sending monthly statements. But it did not 

tell the Gomezes that they no longer owed the money. In 
2 No. 19-1737

2011 it sold the debt to Cavalry SPV, which used Cavalry 

Portfolio Services (Cavalry) to collect. In January 2013 Cavalry sent a le^er seeking payment of about $5,800, of which 

roughly $1,600 was interest for months after the Bank gave 

up billing the Gomezes. It sent another le^er in March 2013 

seeking $6,200.

A lawyer for the Gomezes asked Cavalry to verify the 

debt. In March 2014 the lawyer received this reply:

Per your request, please find enclosed the verification of your 

client’s debt. Your account is now subject to resumption of collection efforts. You may contact us at [phone number] from 

[time] Monday through Friday.

This le^er added that the balance due was $6,320.13. It did 

not explain how much of this was interest, but since the original unpaid debt was only $3,226.35, the le^er effectively 

claimed an entitlement to more than $3,000 in interest, including the $1,600 that Cavalry believes had accrued before 

the Bank sold the account.

Eight months later the Gomezes filed this suit under the 

Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). They contended 

that, by demanding interest during the months between the 

Bank’s decision to write off the debt and its sale, Cavalry 

violated 15 U.S.C. §1692e, which prohibits “any false, deceptive, or misleading representation ... in connection with the 

collection of any debt.” Section 1692e(2) adds that this 

phrase includes a “false representation of ... the character, 

amount, or legal status of any debt”. The district court concluded that the Bank had waived interest during the months 

after the charge-off—despite a non-waiver clause in the contract—by not sending monthly statements. For this conclusion the judge relied on 12 C.F.R. §1026.5(b)(2), which re-
No. 19-1737 3

quires banks to send periodic statements during any time

when interest or fees are charged to the accounts. But the 

judge dismissed the suit as untimely. 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS

163575 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 24, 2018). The period of limitations is 

one year, 15 U.S.C. §1692k(d), and the two dunning le^ers 

had been sent more than a year before suit began. The verification le^er came within a year before the suit, but the judge 

thought the le^er factual and unproblematic.

Plaintiffs presented several legal theories and claims that 

the district judge did not mention. The decision is nonetheless final. The court entered a take-nothing judgment in defendants’ favor. The district judge’s omissions could have 

been bases of appeal (though they aren’t) but do not prevent 

appeal.

Subject-ma^er jurisdiction is another potential problem. 

The complaint does not identify a concrete harm that any of 

the three le^ers caused, which makes standing to sue doubtful. See, e.g., Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540 (2016); 

Casillas v. Madison Avenue Associates, Inc., 926 F.3d 329 (7th 

Cir. 2019). We recognize, however, that some decisions of 

this and other appellate courts have found, or assumed, that 

standing exists when the dunning le^er allegedly violates 

§1692e. See Barnes v. Advanced Call Center Technologies, LLC, 

493 F.3d 838 (7th Cir. 2007); Tourgeman v. Collins Financial 

Services, Inc., 755 F.3d 1109, 1116 (9th Cir. 2014); Boucher v. 

Finance System of Green Bay, Inc., 880 F.3d 362 (7th Cir. 2018). 

Cavalry does not ask us to revisit that subject, so we shall 

take circuit law as we found it, without inquiring whether 

our older cases are consistent with Spokeo and Casillas.

The suit is timely with respect to the third le^er. Plaintiffs 

contend that the amount stated in this le^er is “false” within 
4 No. 19-1737

the statute’s meaning. That Cavalry sent earlier le^ers that 

also demanded $1,600 in interest for time between the writeoff and the Bank’s sale of the debt to Cavalry is neither here 

nor there. Each violation of a federal statute carries its own 

period of limitations. See National Railroad Passenger Corp. v. 

Morgan, 536 U.S. 101 (2002). The third le^er was not an inevitable consequence of the first two. Cf. LedbeIer v. Goodyear 

Tire & Rubber Co., 550 U.S. 618 (2007). It was a stand-alone 

response to a demand for verification, and it could have 

omi^ed or recalculated the amount claimed.

Consider a hypothetical from the law of torts. If Perkins 

alleges that a postal truck negligently dented her car in January 2018, again in January 2019, and a third time in January 

2020, a claim and suit about the third dent under the Federal 

Tort Claims Act, which has a two-year period of limitations, 

28 U.S.C. §2401(b), could be filed any time before the end of 

2021. Each tort would be a distinct claim with its own period 

of limitations. A negligent driver could not acquire immunity by waiting, before transgressing again, until the time to 

sue on an earlier wrong had expired. Just so with le^ers said 

to violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Cf. Rotkiske 

v. Klemm, 140 S. Ct. 355 (2019) (time to sue under the Act begins on the date of each violation, rather than at some different time determined by principles of equity).

But we do not think that the third le^er violates the statute. Plaintiffs’ contention that it is “false” or “misleading” to 

seek any amount greater than a court eventually finds to be 

due lacks support in the statute, when we use the word 

“false” as people commonly use it. We can see how it could 

be “false” to seek payment on a debt that cannot be collected 

at all. That’s the basis for our holding in Pantoja v. Portfolio 
No. 19-1737 5

Recovery Associates, LLC, 852 F.3d 679 (7th Cir. 2017), that the 

statute forbids a debt collector to send dunning le^ers when 

the debt collector knows that a court would be sure to reject 

the claim, because the statute of limitations on collection had 

expired. (Pantoja reserves the question whether it is proper 

to send such a le^er if the sender adds that the debt is unenforceable but asks the debtor to pay on moral rather than legal grounds.) Yet the sort of claim that Cavalry presented is 

not one that any careful debt collector would know to be unenforceable.

The Gomezes promised to pay interest, and Cavalry’s 

computer used the correct rate. The contract provided that 

the Bank’s inaction or silence would not waive any of its 

rights. The Bank’s failure to send monthly statements, coupled with 12 C.F.R. §1026.5(b)(2), might block the collection 

of interest for the months before the debt was sold—but perhaps the right way to enforce §1026.5(b)(2) is to impose administrative penalties rather than deem contractual interest 

to be forfeited. That was (and remains) a topic for litigation.

A demand for payment cannot be called “false” just because, several years later, a judge disagrees with a legal argument supporting the debt collector’s calculation of how 

much is due. A statement is false, or not, when made; there 

is no falsity by hindsight. All of the decisions in this circuit 

in which a le^er was deemed to have falsely stated the 

amount of the debt dealt with errors known or readily 

knowable when the le^er was sent. See, e.g., Seeger v. AFNI,

Inc., 548 F.3d 1107, 1111–13 (7th Cir. 2008) (unauthorized collection fee); Shula v. Lawent, 359 F.3d 489 (7th Cir. 2004) 

(a^empt to collect court costs when none had been allowed 

by a court).
6 No. 19-1737

In a post-argument submission, plaintiffs concede that 

developments after a le^er has been sent do not render it 

false. Still, relying on Fields v. Wilber Law Firm, P.C., 383 F.3d 

562, 565 (7th Cir. 2004), they contend that a debt collector 

must openly state the legal position behind its calculation, if 

it wants to avoid having a le^er tagged as misleading or 

worse. We need not decide whether this reading of Fields is 

correct because plaintiffs’ position encounters a further 

problem: Cavalry sent the third le^er to a lawyer, not to a 

potentially credulous debtor.

Bravo v. Midland Credit Management, Inc., 812 F.3d 599, 603 

(7th Cir. 2016), concludes that the right question under 

§1692e for a le^er to counsel is whether it would deceive or 

mislead a competent a^orney. Bravo cited many other decisions in this circuit, dating back to Turner v. J.V.D.B. & Associates, Inc., 330 F.3d 991, 995 (7th Cir. 2003). Lawyers often

receive and critically evaluate demands against their clients. 

They have the resources to determine for themselves whether those demands are valid. If the plaintiffs’ lawyer doubted 

the propriety of the figure mentioned in the verification 

le^er, he could have followed up with Cavalry or advised 

his clients not to pay the $1,600, which the first two le^ers 

showed had been included. Cavalry did not need to explain 

to a lawyer something that the first two le^ers revealed, and 

it certainly did not need to provide a disquisition on the 

non-waiver clause in the contract or Cavalry’s take on 12 

C.F.R. §1026.5(b)(2). Verification of a debt is supposed to be a 

simple process, not an occasion for a legal brief.

Several circuits agree with Bravo and its predecessors

about how §1692e applies to correspondence between debt 

collectors and debtors’ lawyers. See, e.g., Kropelnicki v. Siegel, 
No. 19-1737 7

290 F.3d 118, 128 (2d Cir. 2002); Powers v. Credit Management 

Services, Inc., 776 F.3d 567, 573–75 (8th Cir. 2015); Dikeman v. 

National Educators, Inc., 81 F.3d 949, 953–54 (10th Cir. 1996). 

Others see ma^ers differently. See, e.g., Simon v. FIA Card 

Services, N.A., 732 F.3d 259, 269–70 (3d Cir. 2013); Bishop v. 

Ross Earle & Bonan, P.A., 817 F.3d 1268, 1277 (11th Cir. 2016). 

Plaintiffs have not asked us to abandon the standard of Bravo

and its predecessors, and we are not disposed to jump from 

one side of a circuit conflict to the other without a powerful 

argument based on the statute’s language.

The third le^er would not have misled a competent lawyer, who also would not deem “false” a demand by a potential opponent in litigation just because counsel believes that 

his client may be able to persuade a judge that there is a defense.

Plaintiffs advance an argument for declaratory and injunctive relief, which they say is not under the federal statute—but they do not develop a substantive argument under 

any other body of law. This means that the judgment dismissing the suit must be

AFFIRMED.