FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

RITA CAMACHO, on behalf of 

herself and all others similarly

situated,

Plaintiff-Appellee, No. 04-17126

v. D.C. No.  BRIDGEPORT FINANCIAL INC., CV 04-0478 CRB

Defendant-Appellant, OPINION

and

RAY LEWIS, CHRISTINA HARBRIDGE,

Defendants. 

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of California

Charles R. Breyer, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

November 14, 2005—San Francisco, California

Filed December 12, 2005

Before: Jerome Farris, A. Wallace Tashima, and

Consuelo M. Callahan, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Tashima

16231
COUNSEL

Mark E. Ellis, Murphy, Pearson, Bradley & Feeney, Sacramento, California, for the defendant-appellant.

Richard J. Rubin, Santa Fe, New Mexico, for the plaintiffappellee. 

CAMACHO v. BRIDGEPORT FINANCIAL INC. 16233
OPINION

TASHIMA, Circuit Judge: 

Rita Camacho (“Camacho”), a debtor, sued Bridgeport

Financial, Inc. (“Bridgeport Financial”), a debt collector, for

violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act

(“FDCPA”), 15 U.S.C. §§ 1692g and 1692e. Camacho alleges

that Bridgeport Financial’s initial collection notice, which

stated that Camacho could only dispute the validity of the

debt in writing, misrepresented Camacho’s rights. The district

court denied Bridgeport Financial’s motion to dismiss, concluding that Camacho had stated a viable claim under the

plain meaning of the statute. The district court certified the

issue for interlocutory appeal and we granted the petition

under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b). We affirm.

BACKGROUND

Camacho’s debt of $42.57 was assigned to Bridgeport

Financial by Into Video.1 In its initial collection communication, Bridgeport Financial included the statement: “Unless

you notify this office in writing within 30 days after receiving

this notice that you dispute the validity of this debt or any portion thereof, this office will assume this debt is valid.”

(Emphasis added.) Camacho sued under §§ 1692g and 1692e

of the FDCPA, alleging that this statement misrepresented the

rights of consumers because it required Camacho to dispute

the debt in writing. Bridgeport Financial filed a motion to dismiss the action under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure

12(b)(6), arguing that § 1692g(a)(3) implicitly requires disputes to be in writing because only written disputes can

invoke the other protections afforded by the FDCPA. The district court rejected Bridgeport Financial’s arguments, holding

that the plain meaning of § 1692g(a)(3) did not require that

1This case was brought as a putative class action, but the district court

has not yet ruled on the class aspects of the case. 

16234 CAMACHO v. BRIDGEPORT FINANCIAL INC.
disputes be in writing and that this interpretation did not

undermine the purpose or destroy the coherence of the statute.

STANDARD OF REVIEW 

We review a district court’s decision to grant or deny a

motion to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) de novo. Fireman’s Fund Ins. Co. v. City of Lodi, 302 F.3d 928, 939 (9th

Cir. 2002). We also review questions of statutory interpretation de novo. Romine v. Diversified Collection Servs., Inc.,

155 F.3d 1142, 1145 (9th Cir. 1998). 

DISCUSSION

[1] The issue before us is whether a collection notice that

requires disputes to be set forth in writing violates 15 U.S.C.

§ 1692g. Under § 1692g(a), a debt collector must send a consumer debtor, within five days of its initial attempt to collect

any debt, a written notice containing:

(1) the amount of the debt;

(2) the name of the creditor to whom the debt is

owed;

(3) 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; 

(4) a statement that if the consumer notifies the debt

collector in writing within the thirty-day period that

the debt, or any portion thereof, is disputed the debt

collector will obtain verification of the debt or a

copy of a judgment against the consumer and a copy

of such verification or judgment will be mailed to

the consumer by the debt collector; and

CAMACHO v. BRIDGEPORT FINANCIAL INC. 16235
(5) a statement that upon the consumer’s written

request within the thirty-day period the debt collector will provide the consumer with the name and

address of the original creditor, if different from the

current creditor.

15 U.S.C. § 1692g(a)(1)-(5) (emphasis added). 

[2] Section 1692g(b) further provides that if the consumer

notifies the collector of a dispute in writing within the 30-day

period, the collector shall cease collection activities until he

obtains the verification or information required by 15 U.S.C.

§ 1692g(a)(4) and (5). 

Bridgeport Financial argues that its collection notice meets

the notice requirements of § 1692g(a)(3) because the subsection must be interpreted as requiring written notice in order

for the procedure in § 1692g(a)(3) to be consistent with the

debt validation mechanisms provided in the later subsections

of § 1692g. Camacho argues, however, that since

§ 1692g(a)(3) does not explicitly include a writing requirement, Bridgeport Financial’s version of the collection notice

misrepresents the debtor’s rights. 

[3] Whether a consumer’s dispute of the validity of a debt

under the FDCPA must be in writing is a question of first

impression in this circuit.2 The only other circuit to address

the issue has held that “given the entire structure of section

2This circuit has stated that, “If no written demand is made, the collector

may assume the debt to be valid.” Mahon v. Credit Bureau of Placer

County Inc., 171 F.3d 1197, 1202 (9th Cir. 1999) (internal quotation

marks and citation omitted). The statement in Mahon, however, was made

in the context of a discussion of § 1692g(b), which has an explicit writing

requirement, not in the context of discussing § 1692g(a)(3). See Sambor

v. Omnia Credit Servs., Inc., 183 F. Supp. 2d 1234, 1240 n.4 (D. Haw.

2002) (explaining why Mahon is inapplicable to analysis of subsection

(a)(3)). Additionally, the statement in Mahon was dicta and therefore is

not binding. See id.

16236 CAMACHO v. BRIDGEPORT FINANCIAL INC.
1692g, subsection (a)(3) must be read to require that a dispute, to be effective, must be in writing.” Graziano v. Harrison, 950 F.2d 107, 112 (3d Cir. 1991).3

 Because we conclude

that we must give effect to the plain meaning of the statute,

we respectfully disagree with Graziano. 

The Supreme Court’s approach to statutory interpretation in

Lamie v. United States Trustee, 540 U.S. 526 (2004), guides

our analysis. In Lamie, the Supreme Court addressed the

omission of the phrase “or to the debtor’s attorney” from 11

U.S.C. § 330(a)(1), which provides for the payment from the

bankruptcy estate of reasonable fees to “a trustee, an examiner, a professional person employed under section 327 or

1103.” Id. at 530. Inclusion of the phrase “or to the debtor’s

attorney” would have made the language parallel with other

parts of the statute that referred to “attorney,” and more compatible with the previous version of the statute. Id. at 530-31.

Further, the statute as it stood was ungrammatical, which

“strengthen[ed] the sense that error exist[ed].” Id. at 531.

Despite this evidence of legislative error, the Supreme Court

refused to insert the phrase. Id. at 535, 542. In reaching this

conclusion, the Court examined the statute’s plain meaning,

whether the plain meaning would lead to absurd or unreasonable results, and legislative intent. 

First, the Court looked to the text of the statute, which

omitted the reference to a debtor’s attorney. Id. at 534. The

Court found that since the plain meaning did not alter the

text’s substance or obscure its meaning, the plain meaning

was not inconsistent with the statute. Id. at 535. The Court

reasoned that absent sufficient indications to the contrary, it

should refrain from inserting language into a statute, even if

it suspected that Congress inadvertently omitted such lan3Two district courts in this circuit have held that a debt may be orally

disputed under § 1692g(a)(3). Sanchez v. Robert E. Weiss, Inc. (In re Sanchez), 173 F. Supp. 2d 1029, 1034 (N.D. Cal. 2001); Harvey v. United

Adjusters, 509 F. Supp. 1218 (D.Or. 1981). 

CAMACHO v. BRIDGEPORT FINANCIAL INC. 16237
guage. Id. at 537. The Court went on to find that the plain

meaning did not lead to an absurd result because even without

the omitted language, compensation for attorneys was still

available. Id. at 536-37. 

[4] “[W]hen the statute’s language is plain, the sole function of the courts — at least where the disposition required by

the text is not absurd — is to enforce it according to its

terms.” Id. at 534 (internal quotation marks and citations

omitted). The plain meaning of § 1692g is that debtors can

trigger the rights under subsection (a)(3) by either an oral or

written “dispute,” while debtors can trigger the rights under

subsections (a)(4) and (a)(5) only through written dispute. 

[5] A statute need not contain parallel language in all of its

subsections in order to be internally consistent. Rather,

“[w]here Congress includes particular language in one section

of a statute but omits it in another section of the same Act, it

is generally presumed that Congress acts intentionally and

purposely in the disparate inclusion or exclusion.” Russello v.

United States, 464 U.S. 16, 23 (1983) (internal citation and

quotation marks omitted); see also Andreiu v. Ashcroft, 253

F.3d 477, 480 (9th Cir. 2001) (en banc). If Congress had

intended to impose a writing requirement in § 1692g(a)(3), it

could have done so in the subsection itself, as it did in the

later subsections of § 1692g(a). See 15 U.S.C. § 1692g(a)(4),

(5); Russello, 464 U.S. at 23. As in Lamie, the plain language

of the text of § 1692g(a)(3) does not state that the consumer

must dispute the debt in writing, and “where the disposition

required by the text is not absurd,” Lamie, 540 U.S. at 534,

we must enforce the statute according to its terms. 

Further, the plain meaning of subsection (a)(3) does not

lead to absurd results because an oral dispute triggers multiple

statutory protections. We thus disagree with the Third Circuit

in Graziano, which found it absurd that an oral dispute could

rebut the presumption of validity but not trigger the verification requirement under § 1692g(a)(4), or the identification

16238 CAMACHO v. BRIDGEPORT FINANCIAL INC.
requirement under § 1692g(a)(5). See Graziano, 950 F.2d at

112. Graziano’s determination that permitting an oral dispute

would render the system “incoherent,” failed to consider those

FDCPA rights that are triggered by an oral dispute. 

Oral dispute of a debt precludes the debt collector from

communicating the debtor’s credit information to others without including the fact that the debt is in dispute. 15 U.S.C.

§ 1692e(8); Brady v. Credit Recovery Co., 160 F.3d 64, 67

(1st Cir. 1998). Additionally, if a consumer owes multiple

debts and makes a payment, the debt collector is prohibited

from applying such payment to a debt which is in dispute. 15

U.S.C. § 1692h. Moreover, a debtor’s oral notification to a

debt collector entitles a debtor to relief under § 1692c(a)(1),

which bars communication with a debtor at “a time or place

known or which should be known to be inconvenient to the

consumer.” 15 U.S.C. § 1692c(a)(1); Fox v. Citicorp Credit

Servs., Inc., 15 F.3d 1507, 1516, 1516 n.10 (9th Cir. 1994)

(finding debt collector could be liable under § 1692c(a)(1) for

contacting debtor at work after consumer orally informed collector not to do so).4

While there is much to be said for the Graziano court’s

conclusion that policy considerations weigh in favor of its

interpretation, see 950 F.2d at 112, under Lamie, we can only

insert language into a statute if the result of the statute’s plain

meaning is absurd. See 540 U.S. at 537-538. Because we conclude that the FDCPA’s statutory scheme, which assigns

lesser rights to debtors who orally dispute a debt and greater

4Other courts have disagreed with Graziano by finding that

§ 1692g(a)(3) itself creates an affirmative obligation for debt collectors

that is triggered by oral dispute. See, e.g., Sanchez, 173 F. Supp. 2d at

1033-1034 (finding that oral dispute rebuts the presumption of validity,

and therefore triggers an obligation for debt collectors to find some evidence of the debt’s validity). However, we need not reach the question of

whether § 1692g(a)(3) itself creates rights for debtors, as we have identified other rights within the Act that are triggered by an oral dispute. 

CAMACHO v. BRIDGEPORT FINANCIAL INC. 16239
rights to debtors who dispute it in writing, is not absurd, we

are not at liberty to insert any additional language. 

Finally, giving effect to the statute’s plain meaning is also

consistent with legislative intent. Congress’ intent in enacting

§ 1692g was to provide an alleged debtor with 30 days to

question and respond to the initial communication of a collection agency. Swanson v. S. Or. Credit Serv., Inc., 869 F.2d

1222, 1226 (9th Cir. 1988). This purpose is further advanced

by an interpretation that allows such response to be in either

written or oral form. Nor does the plain language of the statute frustrate the purpose of the statute by misleading or confusing consumers. Collection notices that include the statute’s

verbatim language have been held not to be confusing. See,

e.g., Jang v. A.M. Miller & Assoc., 122 F.3d 480, 484 (7th

Cir. 1997) (holding that a collection notice that uses the exact

statutory language will not be considered false, misleading, or

deceptive). Consumers can comprehend the statute’s plain

language. We are not persuaded by Bridgeport Financial’s

conjecture that the plain meaning of § 1692g is confusing and

frustrates the Congressional purpose of protecting consumers.

CONCLUSION

[6] The district court correctly denied Bridgeport Financial’s motion to dismiss. The plain language of subsection

(a)(3) indicates that disputes need not be made in writing, and

the plain meaning is neither absurd in its results nor contrary

to legislative intent. Thus, there is no writing requirement

implicit in § 1692g(a)(3). Bridgeport Financial’s collection

notice violated § 1692g insofar as it stated that disputes must

be made in writing. 

The order of the district court denying Bridgeport Financial’s motion to dismiss is AFFIRMED and the case is

remanded to the district court for further proceedings. 

16240 CAMACHO v. BRIDGEPORT FINANCIAL INC.