In the

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 19-3494 

FRANCINA SMITH, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v.

GC SERVICES LIMITED PARTNERSHIP and ORG GC GP BUYER,

LLC, 

Defendants-Appellees. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division.

No. 1:16-cv-01897-RLY-DLP — Richard L. Young, Judge. 

____________________ 

SUBMITTED JANUARY 4, 2021 — DECIDED JANUARY 21, 2021 

____________________ 

Before EASTERBROOK, KANNE, and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges. 

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. The first time this suit was 

here, we held that GC Services, a debt collector, had waived 

or forfeited any entitlement to arbitrate its dispute with 

Francina Smith. 907 F.3d 495 (7th Cir. 2018). The district 

court then held that Smith had not been injured and dismissed the suit. 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 227464 (S.D. Ind. Dec. 2, 
2 No. 19-3494 

2019). The district judge relied principally on Spokeo, Inc. v. 

Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540 (2016), and Casillas v. Madison Avenue 

Associates, Inc., 926 F.3d 329 (7th Cir. 2019) (Barreb, J.). 

We put Smith’s appeal on hold while the court considered several other cases that presented questions about 

standing to sue under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act 

(FDCPA or the Act). See Larkin v. Finance System of Green Bay, 

Inc., 982 F.3d 1060 (7th Cir. 2020); Gunn v. Thrasher, Buschmann & Voelkel, P.C., 982 F.3d 1069 (7th Cir. 2020); BruneJ v. 

Convergent Outsourcing, Inc., 982 F.3d 1067 (7th Cir. 2020); 

Spuhler v. State Collection Service, Inc., 983 F.3d 282 (7th Cir. 

2020); Bazile v. Finance System of Green Bay, Inc., 983 F.3d 274 

(7th Cir. 2020). See also NeJles v. Midland Funding LLC, No. 

19-3327 (7th Cir. Dec. 21, 2020). Now that those opinions 

have issued, and the parties have filed supplemental memoranda, the appeal is ready for decision. 

Smith complains that GC Services violated 15 U.S.C. 

§1692g(a)(3), part of the Act, because a debt-collection leber 

stated, among other things:

If you dispute this balance or the validity of this debt, please let 

us know in writing. If you do not dispute this debt in writing 

within 30 days after you receive this leber, we will assume this

debt is valid.

As Smith sees things, these sentences conflict with 

§1692g(a)(3), which requires a debt collector to send each 

consumer “a statement that unless the consumer, within 

thirty days after receipt of the notice, disputes the validity of 

the debt, or any portion thereof, the debt will be assumed to 

be valid by the debt collector”. The Act does not say how a 

consumer may dispute a debt’s validity. It follows, Smith insists, that the consumer is entitled to choose how to dispute 
No. 19-3494 3 

a debt. One might say in opposition that, precisely because 

the statute is silent on the means of disputing a debt, a debt 

collector may decide how it wants disputes to be presented. 

Many potential litigants believe that writings are desirable 

because they eliminate controversies about who said what to 

whom and when. This circuit has not addressed the question 

whether a debt collector violates §1692g(a)(3) by telling consumers to put their disputes in writing. We do not take up 

that subject today, because we agree with the district court 

that Smith lacks standing to sue. 

Spokeo holds that the requirement of injury as an element 

of standing is essential to suits under consumer-protection 

statutes, and Casillas applies that holding to the Fair Debt 

Collection Practices Act. In the wake of Spokeo and Casillas, 

many litigants and some district judges distinguished between “procedural” claims, which would be governed by

Spokeo and Casillas, and “substantive” claims, for which any 

asserted violation of the statute would be treated as an injury. Larkin and its successors in this circuit disapprove that 

distinction and hold that injury in fact is essential to standing, whether the asserted violation is best understood as 

substantive or procedural. Several of these decisions, such as

Larkin and Gunn, add that a consumer’s assertion that she 

was confused by a debt-collection leber does not show injury 

unless the confusion leads the consumer to take some detrimental step. Smith, who says that she was confused by the 

leber she received, does not contend that the leber’s supposed lack of clarity led her to take any detrimental step, 

such as paying money she did not owe. She therefore needs 

some other way to show injury. 
4 No. 19-3494 

Casillas dealt with how a debt collector verifies the existence and amount of a debt. The plaintiff in Casillas saw a violation in the debt collector’s failure to tell her that she had to 

communicate in writing in order to avail herself of the Act’s 

protections. We replied: “[N]o harm, no foul.” 926 F.3d at 

331. Because Casillas didn’t want to communicate with the 

debt collector at all, the omission of details could not have 

harmed her. Smith takes a position opposite to that of Casillas: that a debt collector violates the Act by telling a consumer to communicate in writing. Her problem is the same: No 

harm, no foul. 

Smith seizes on the fact that Casillas wasn’t planning to 

communicate at all and thus could not have been harmed by 

what the debt collector said (or didn’t say) about the right 

way to communicate. In her supplemental filing after we issued Larkin, Smith proposes to distinguish Casillas on the 

ground that, if she had known that she could dispute the 

debt orally, she would have done so. We doubt that this belated position is proper. Smith’s complaint does not contain 

such an assertion. Indeed, when her standing was challenged in the district court, Smith replied: “[W]hether Ms. 

Smith, herself, intended to dispute the debt cannot be said at 

this point in the litigation”. If she had not made up her mind 

even after filing suit, she cannot have had an intent to dispute the debt within 30 days of receiving the leber. 

No maber. Even in her supplemental memorandum, 

Smith has not tried to explain how a need to use a writing 

deterred her from disputing a debt (she does not claim to be 

illiterate) or what good a dispute would have done her. The 

district judge observed that Smith “did not allege she had 

any doubt that she owed the creditor the stated amount of 
No. 19-3494 5 

money. And she failed to allege any injury that flowed from 

her failure to dispute the debt.” 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 227464 

at *5. She does not say, for example, that GC Services took 

any debt-collection step during the time that would have 

been required for the original creditor to verify the debt, had 

it been disputed. 

Statutory rights such as the power to dispute the validity 

of an asserted debt can be valuable if the debt collector is 

mistaken about how much the consumer owes, or to whom. 

But when the debt collector is not mistaken—and Smith does 

not allege that GC Services has been trying to collect anything that she does not owe—a given statutory right may 

have lible or no value. 

Standing often depends on what theory a plaintiff advances and how injury would be proved. See Thornley v. 

Clearview AI, Inc., No. 20-3249 (7th Cir. Jan. 14, 2021). We do 

not hold that someone asserting a violation of §1692g(a)(3)

cannot establish injury; we hold only that Smith did not allege 

injury, because she did not try to show what good a dispute 

would have done her. She is no worse off than if the leber 

had told her that she could dispute the debt orally. Because 

she is uninjured, the judgment of the district court dismissing the suit for lack of Article III standing is 

AFFIRMED.