IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS 

DALLAS DIVISION 

DE-ERIC COOPER, § 

 § 

Plaintiff, § 

 § 

V. § No. 3:22-cv-701-M-BN 

 § 

RS CLARK & ASSOCIATES, INC., § 

 § 

Defendant. § 

FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATION OF THE 

UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE 

Plaintiff De-Eric Cooper filed a pro se complaint alleging that Defendant RS 

Clark & Associates, Inc. (RSC) violated the Fair Debt Collections Practice Act 

(FDCPA) with respect to a debt owed by Audree Battles, who Cooper alleges “assigned 

100 percent of [her] claim(s)” to him. Dkt. No. 3. 

United States District Judge Barbara M. G. Lynn referred Cooper’s complaint 

to the undersigned United States magistrate judge for pretrial management under 

28 U.S.C. § 636(b) and a standing order of reference. 

RSC then moved to dismiss Cooper’s complaint under Federal Rules of Civil 

Procedure 12(b)(1) (for lack of Article III standing) and 12(b)(6). See Dkt. No. 5. 

Cooper responded. See Dkt. No. 8. RSC replied. See Dkt. No. 9. And the undersigned 

now enters these findings of fact, conclusions of law, and recommendation that the 

Court should dismiss the complaint for lack of jurisdiction. 

Discussion 

“Under the dictates of Article III of the United States Constitution, federal 

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courts are confined to adjudicating actual ‘cases’ and ‘controversies.’” Henderson v. 

Stalder, 287 F.3d 374, 378 (5th Cir. 2002) (quoting U.S. CONST. art. III, § 2, cl. 1). And 

“[t]here is no case or controversy without standing to sue.” Williams v. Parker, 843 

F.3d 617, 620 (5th Cir. 2016) (citing Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811, 818 (1997)). 

Consequently, Article III “[s]tanding is a threshold issue that [a federal court 

must] consider before examining the merits.” Id. (citing Cibolo Waste, Inc. v. City of 

San Antonio, 718 F.3d 469, 473 (5th Cir. 2013)); see also Ramming v. United States, 

281 F.3d 158, 161 (5th Cir. 2001) (per curiam) (“When a Rule 12(b)(1) motion is filed 

in conjunction with other Rule 12 motions, the court should consider the Rule 12(b)(1) 

jurisdictional attack before addressing any attack on the merits.”). 

To obtain “Article III standing, a plaintiff must allege that it has been injured, 

that the defendant caused the injury, and that the requested relief will redress the 

injury.” Cotton v. Certain Underwriters at Lloyd’s of London, 831 F.3d 592, 595 (5th 

Cir. 2016) (citing Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61 (1992)). 

“‘That triad of injury in fact, causation, and redressability constitutes the core 

of Article III’s case-or-controversy requirement,’ and [Cooper], as ‘the party invoking 

federal jurisdiction, bears the burden of establishing its existence.’” Inclusive 

Communities Project, Inc. v. Dep’t of Treasury, 946 F.3d 649, 655 (5th Cir. 2019) 

(cleaned up; quoting Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env’t, 523 U.S. 83, 103-04 

(1998)). 

Here, Cooper alleges not that RSC caused him injury but that RSC injured 

Battles – RSC’s “publishing of [ ] inaccurate and incomplete information has severely 

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damages the personal and credit reputation of Ms. Battles and caused severe 

humiliation, emotional distress, mental anguish, and lower FICO Scores,” Dkt. No. 

3, ¶ 12 – and that Battles “assigned 100 percent of [her] claim(s)” to him, id., ¶ 2, 

entitling him to standing to file this lawsuit for her injury. 

While there does not appear to be controlling precedent as to whether an 

FDCPA claim like the one at issue here may be assigned, the federal district courts, 

including – very recently – one in this district addressing another lawsuit filed by 

Cooper, that have 

considered this issue have noted that the FDCPA does not expressly 

permit assignment, and that it specifically provides for recovery of 

damages by the person who is a victim of an FDCPA violation. For this 

reason, they have looked to state law to determine assignability of a 

claim under that statute. 

Resort to state law is likewise appropriate in this case. “There is 

no federal law of assignments, and the [United States Court of Appeals 

for the] Fifth Circuit has held that the validity of a particular 

assignment of a federal cause of action is governed by the state law that 

the appropriate conflict of laws principles dictate should control the 

contract” of assignment. Nicolls Pointing Coulson, Ltd. v. 

Transportation Underwriters of Louisiana, Inc., 777 F. Supp. 493, 496 

(E.D. La. 1991) (citing Martin v. Morgan Drive Away, Inc., 665 F.2d 598 

(5th Cir. 1982)). In Martin, the Fifth Circuit looked to state law to 

determine whether assignment of a federal antitrust claim, which was 

not precluded by federal law, was void under state law champerty 

doctrines. See 665 F. 2d at 604 (citing Sampliner v. Motion Picture 

Patents Co., 255 F. 244 (2d Cir. 1918), rev’d on other grounds, 254 U.S. 

233 (1920) (finding Sherman Act claim assignable but applying Ohio law 

to decide whether the assignment was invalid for champerty)). “In doing 

so, the court distinguished between the federal nature of the claims and 

the law governing the form of the assignment of the claims.” In re East 

Cameron Partners, L.P., No. [08-51207,] 2011 WL 4625368, at *2-3 

(Bankr. W.D. La. June 23, 2011) (discussing Martin). In contrast to the 

federal antitrust claim in Martin, however, no court appears to have 

found that an FDCPA claim is assignable under federal law. 

Although the Texas Supreme Court does not appear to have 

specifically addressed the assignability of claims under the Texas Fair 

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Debt Collection Practices Act, it has considered the assignability of 

claims under another consumer protection law, the Texas Deceptive 

Trade Practices Act (TDTPA). See PGG Indus. v. JMB/Houston Ctrs. 

Ltd. P’ship, 146 S.W.3d 79 (Tex. 2004). In that case, it observed 

generally that: 

With respect to the assignment of claims, we have 

recognized the collapse of the common-law rule that 

generally prohibited such assignments. But the 

assignability of most claims does not mean all are 

assignable; exceptions may be required due to equity and 

public policy. Courts addressing assignability have often 

distinguished between claims that are property-based and 

remedial and claims that are personal and punitive, 

holding that the former are assignable and the latter are 

not. 

PGG Indus., 146 S.W.3d at 87 (cleaned up). TDTPA claims, it found, 

“clearly fall in the latter category.” Id. It also found that the permitting 

assignment of those claims to a non-consumer was inconsistent with the 

purpose of the statutory cause of action. See id. at 92. 

Cooper v. Nat’l Credit Adjusters, LLC, No. 3:22-cv-521-K-BH, 2022 WL 17656316, at 

*3-*4 (citations omitted), rec. accepted, 2022 WL 17631533 (N.D. Tex. Dec. 13, 2022). 

The undersigned finds the reasoning in this case persuasive and agrees with 

the court’s conclusion that Texas law as to assignment of TDTPA claims “is equally 

applicable to the FDCPA claim that [Cooper] asserts.” Id. at *4. That is, “[t]here 

appears to be no basis for finding that assignment of this consumer claim is consistent 

with, or would be permitted by, Texas law. Accordingly, the purported assignment of 

[Battles’s] FDCPA claim to [Cooper] is invalid under Texas law.” Id.

Cooper counters that another decision of the United States Supreme Court 

supports that he, as the assignee of Battles’s FDCPA claim, has Article III standing. 

See generally Dkt. No. 8 (relying on Sprint Commc’ns Co., L.P. v. APCC Servs., Inc., 

554 U.S. 269 (2008)). As the Fifth Circuit has summarized, 

[t]he Sprint Court held that an assignee for collection has Article III 

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standing, even where the recovered proceeds of the claim are promised 

to the assignor, and even though the assignee did not originally suffer 

any injury. Supporting the proposition that “the assignee of a claim has 

standing to assert the injury in fact suffered by the assignor,” the Sprint

Court cited to Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. United States ex 

rel. Stevens[, 529 U.S. 765 (2000)]. In Vermont Agency, the Court held 

that a relator had Article III standing to bring a qui tam action because, 

through the government’s partial assignment its claim for damages, the 

government had conferred its injury in fact to the relator. In both Sprint

and Vermont Agency, the Court found that the petitioners had standing 

based on the history and precedent permitting assignees to maintain 

suit. 

Lee v. Verizon Commc’ns, Inc., 837 F.3d 523, 547 (5th Cir. 2016) (footnotes omitted). 

Analyzing another FDCPA-assignee plaintiff’s reliance on Sprint to establish 

an injury in fact – “[a]s framed by Plaintiff’s allegations and the parties’ arguments, 

Plaintiff’s standing hinges on the validity of Ms. Parker’s assignment of her FDCPA 

claim to Plaintiff” – a federal district court in Oklahoma first found that, like here, 

precedent in its circuit has established that state law governs as to the validity of 

assignments and then found that, similar to Texas, Oklahoma prevents the 

assignment of non-contractual claims. Dotson v. Transworld Sys., Inc., No. CIV-22-

29-D, 2022 WL 2655785, at *2 (W.D. Okla. July 8, 2022). 

The court in Dotson next found 

that Plaintiff’s reliance on Sprint is misplaced. In Sprint, the plaintiffs 

were collection firms or debt “aggregators” who took assignments of 

claims from payphone operators and sued long-distance carriers to 

recover compensation due for connecting long-distance calls. See Sprint, 

554 U.S. at 271-72. The claim assigned in Sprint was one for money 

owed – that is, the defendant’s debt to the assignor, assigned for 

purposes of collection – and the validity of the assignment was not 

disputed. See Sprint, 554 U.S. at 271-72, 286. Plaintiff does not allege 

that Defendants owed Ms. Parker money or that she assigned Plaintiff 

a debt for collection, and here, the assignment was invalid. 

Id. at *3. 

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Cooper’s reliance on Sprint is similarly misplaced. Particularly where the 

assignment here is not valid under Texas law, Cooper cannot rely on Sprint to support 

the novel expansion of Article III standing he advances. Cf. Lee, 837 F.3d at 547 

(“Since the Court’s reasoning in both [Sprint and Vermont Agency] was firmly 

grounded on the history and tradition of assignment relationships, applying that 

reasoning to a circumstance in which no such relationship existed is speculative.”). 

In sum, Cooper has not shown an injury in fact to establish Article III standing. 

Consequently, he has not shown that there is subject matter jurisdiction. And RSC’s 

motion to dismiss the complaint should be granted under Rule 12(b)(1). 

Recommendation

The Court should grant Defendant RS Clark & Associates, Inc.’s motion to 

dismiss [Dkt. No. 5] under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) and dismiss this 

case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. 

A copy of these findings, conclusions, and recommendation shall be served on 

all parties in the manner provided by law. Any party who objects to any part of these 

findings, conclusions, and recommendation must file specific written objections 

within 14 days after being served with a copy. See 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1); FED. R. CIV.

P. 72(b). In order to be specific, an objection must identify the specific finding or 

recommendation to which objection is made, state the basis for the objection, and 

specify the place in the magistrate judge’s findings, conclusions, and recommendation 

where the disputed determination is found. An objection that merely incorporates by 

reference or refers to the briefing before the magistrate judge is not specific. Failure 

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to file specific written objections will bar the aggrieved party from appealing the 

factual findings and legal conclusions of the magistrate judge that are accepted or 

adopted by the district court, except upon grounds of plain error. See Douglass v. 

United Servs. Auto. Ass’n, 79 F.3d 1415, 1417 (5th Cir. 1996). 

DATED: December 28, 2022 

_________________________________________ 

DAVID L. HORAN 

UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE

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