In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 17-3408

DIANE RHONE,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

MEDICAL BUSINESS BUREAU, LLC,

Defendant-Appellant.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 16 C 5215 — Virginia M. Kendall, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED SEPTEMBER 26, 2018 — DECIDED FEBRUARY 7, 2019

____________________

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and EASTERBROOK and ROVNER,

Circuit Judges.

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. This case is about character—

the character of a debt. A debt collector must not make any 

“false representation” about “the character, amount, or legal 

status of any debt”. 15 U.S.C. §1692e(2)(A). A district court 

concluded that a debt collector misrepresented a debt’s

“character” by reporting to a credit bureau that the debtor 

had nine unpaid bills of $60 rather than one of $540. We 
2 No. 17-3408

hold, to the contrary, that arithmetic does not affect a debt’s 

“character.” The statutory word “amount” rather than the 

word “character” is what governs reporting the debt’s size.

Diane Rhone received physical therapy from Illinois 

Bone and Joint Institute, which billed her $134 for each session. Insurance covered all but a $60 co-pay per session. 

Rhone did not remit her part of the bills, however, and the 

Institute turned to the Medical Business Bureau for debt collection. After three years of dunning legers did not work, the 

Bureau reported to Equifax that Rhone owes nine debts of 

$60 each. That led to this suit, in which Rhone contends that 

the Bureau had to report the aggregate debt of $540 rather 

than nine $60 debts. Judge Der-Yeghiayan agreed with that 

submission. 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 177800 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 25, 

2017). After he retired the case was assigned to Judge Kendall, who imposed a $1,000 penalty. 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS

188433 (N.D. Ill. Apr. 27, 2018).

The credit report was factually correct. Rhone incurred 

nine debts of $60 each. Judge Der-Yeghiayan did not explain 

why the difference between 1 × $540 and 9 × $60 misrepresents the “character” of a debt. Neither the district judge nor

Rhone offered a definition of the word “character.” Asked at 

oral argument whether a debt collector should report one 

debt, or two, if a person buys two cars from a single dealer 

and does not pay for either car, Rhone’s lawyer replied: “It 

would depend.” Counsel told us that a judge should consider “all the facts and circumstances” once litigation is underway. Yet what a court (or for that mager a debt collector) 

needs is a rule of law to apply to those facts and circumstances. This is a statutory suit, not a common-law action. 

The word “character” either requires aggregation of debts 
No. 17-3408 3

arising from multiple transactions with a single entity, or it

does not.

The statute refers separately to the “character” and the 

“amount” of a debt. Rhone does not contend that the Bureau 

misrepresented the “amount” of the debt by telling Equifax 

that Rhone owes $60 for each of nine medical treatments. We 

can imagine a regulation specifying whether debts to a single creditor should be aggregated (or perhaps reported both 

singly and in the aggregate)—consistency contributes to clarity—but Rhone does not point to such a regulation, nor 

could we find one. One benefit of identifying each amount 

separately is that a debtor then can identify exactly which 

transactions are at issue. If the Bureau had reported one $540 

debt, Rhone might well have asserted that the report was

misleading—after all, she does not owe $540 for any transaction. Per-transaction reporting also shows whether some of 

the debts are stale (that is, whether the statute of limitations 

bars collection). Consumers and credit bureaus alike may 

find that information valuable.

A search through decisions from this court and the other 

courts of appeals did not turn up any discussing whether 

aggregation (or not) of all amounts owed to a single creditor 

concerns the “character” of a debt. Indeed, few decisions 

discuss the meaning of that word in any debt-related context. In this circuit, Fields v. Wilbur Law Firm, P.C., 383 F.3d 

562 (7th Cir. 2004), holds that presenting a debt plus agorneys’ fees as a single undifferentiated sum misstates the 

debt’s character, while Hahn v. Triumph Partnerships LLC, 557 

F.3d 755 (7th Cir. 2009), holds that combining principal and 

interest does not do so. Agorneys’ fees differ in character 

from the main debt, while interest does not. Elsewhere,
4 No. 17-3408

Donohue v. Quick Collect, Inc., 592 F.3d 1027, 1033 (9th Cir. 

2010), agrees with Hahn, while Miller v. Javitch, Block & 

Rathbone, 561 F.3d 588, 592–94 (6th Cir. 2009), holds that describing a debt as a loan rather than an account receivable 

does not misstate its character. None of these decisions holds

or implies that it magers to a debt’s “character” whether 

amounts due for individual purchases from a single merchant are stated separately or as a total.

The absence of authoritative or even persuasive guidance 

leaves us on our own. To our ears, “character” sounds like a 

reference to the kind of obligation. (That is essentially how 

Fields heard it, too.) A secured auto loan would be of one 

character, an unsecured credit-card debt another, a judgment 

debt a third, and a subordinated debenture (an instrument 

junior by contract) a fourth. Keeping these kinds of obligation distinct reduces the potential for confusion about their 

nature and relative priority. But the number of transactions 

between a debtor and a single merchant does not affect the 

genesis, nature, or priority of the debt and so does not concern its character. The statute names “character, amount, or 

legal status” as distinct agributes, and it would undercut this 

disjunction to treat arithmetic as concerning the debt’s 

“character” rather than its “amount.”

The district court’s opinion, and the parties’ briefs, devote considerable agention to whether the Bureau made a 

proper report of “tradelines.” This is a word that Equifax uses in the conduct of its own business. It does not appear in 

the statute or any relevant regulation. (The word “tradeline” 

or the phrase “trade line” appears four times in the Code of

Federal Regulations. None of the regulations defines it, and 

none concerns debt collectors’ reports to credit bureaus.) 
No. 17-3408 5

Whether Equifax has a grievance against Medical Business 

Bureau—and whether Equifax offers debtors some remedy if 

creditors or debt collectors err in implementing Equifax’s 

policies—are neither here nor there for our purposes. 

Equifax might have a duty to correct its report if an error 

with respect to the number of tradelines affects a consumer’s 

credit rating. See 15 U.S.C. §1681i(a). But this suit rests on 

§1692e(2)(A), not on Equifax’s vocabulary.

Medical Business Bureau did not misstate the “character” 

of Rhone’s debt to the Illinois Bone and Joint Institute, so the 

judgment of the district court is

REVERSED.