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United States Court of Appeals.

Fifth Circuit.

No. 96-30737.

Daniel GARRETT, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

Richard S. DERBES, A Professional Law Corporation; Richard S.

Derbes, Attorney at Law, Defendants-Appellees.

April 23, 1997.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle

District of Louisiana.

Before EMILIO M. GARZA, PARKER and DENNIS, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

In early April 1993, Bell South Mobility retained the law firm

of Richard S. Derbes, A Professional Law Corporation, to collect

delinquent telephone bills from certain customers. Over the next

nine months, Richard S. Derbes, on behalf of the law firm, mailed

approximately 639 demand letters to individual customers of Bell

South. Daniel Garrett received one of these demand letters and

then filed an action against Derbes and his law firm (jointly,

"Derbes") alleging several violations of the Fair Debt Collection

Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1692 et seq.

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act prohibits a "debt

collector" from making false or misleading representations and from

engaging in various abusive and unfair practices. Heintz v.

Jenkins, 514 U.S. 291, ----, 115 S.Ct. 1489, 1490, 131 L.Ed.2d 395

(1995). The act defines a "debt collector" as "any person who uses

any instrumentality of interstate commerce or the mails in any
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business the principal purpose of which is the collection of any

debts, or who regularly collects or attempts to collect, directly

or indirectly, debts owed or due or asserted to be owed or due

another." 15 U.S.C. § 1692a(6).

The district court first determined that the "principal

purpose" of Derbes' law practice was not the collection of debts.

It then determined that Derbes did not "regularly" attempt to

collect debts owed another because (1) Derbes' work for Bell South

constituted less than 0.5 percent of his entire practice during the

nine-month period his law firm represented Bell South, (2) there

was no ongoing relationship between Derbes and Bell South, and (3)

Derbes had not represented Bell South in other matters. On this

ground, the district court granted Derbes summary judgment and

dismissed Garrett's complaint with prejudice. Our review of a

grant of summary judgment is de novo. Fairley v. Turan-Foley

Imports, Inc., 65 F.3d 475, 479 (5th Cir.1995). Moreover, when the

relevant facts are undisputed, as here, the applicability of a

statute's terms is a question of law for the court to decide.

Coffman v. Trickey, 884 F.2d 1057, 1061 (8th Cir.1989), cert.

denied, 494 U.S. 1056, 110 S.Ct. 1523, 108 L.Ed.2d 763 (1990).

Clearly, Congress must have intended the "principal purpose"

prong of § 1692a(6) to differ from the "regularly" prong. See

Jarecki v. Searle & Co., 367 U.S. 303, 307-08, 81 S.Ct. 1579, 1582,

6 L.Ed.2d 859 (1961) (noting that we may not adopt a forced reading

of a statute that renders one part a mere redundancy). Thus, a

person may regularly render debt collection services, even if these
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services are not a principal purpose of his business. Indeed, if

the volume of a person's debt collection services is great enough,

it is irrelevant that these services only amount to a small

fraction of his total business activity; the person still renders

them "regularly." Stojanovski v. Strobl and Manoogian, P.C., 783

F.Supp. 319, 322 (E.D.Mich.1992).

Therefore, we hold that a person who, during a single

nine-month period, attempts to collect debts owed another by 639

different individuals "regularly" attempts to collect debts owed

another, and thus is a "debt collector" under § 1692a(6).

REVERSED AND REMANDED for proceedings consistent with this

opinion.