2023 UT App 117

THE UTAH COURT OF APPEALS

SAMIR MENESES, ALISSA BLAKE, DANIEL LOWRANCE, AND 

RODNEY HILL,

Appellants,

v.

SALANDER ENTERPRISES LLC,

Appellee.

Opinion

No. 20210720-CA

Filed September 28, 2023

Third District Court, Salt Lake Department

The Honorable Kara Pettit

No. 200901992

Daniel M. Baczynski, Attorney for Appellants

Brett B. Larsen and Gregory M. Constantino, 

Attorneys for Appellee

JUDGE DAVID N. MORTENSEN authored this Opinion, in which 

JUDGES GREGORY K. ORME and RYAN M. HARRIS concurred.

MORTENSEN, Judge:

¶1 Salander Enterprises LLC (Salander) is in the business of 

buying debts and then seeking to recover the amounts owed. 

Salander purchased debts owed by Samir Meneses, Alissa Blake, 

Daniel Lowrance, and Rodney Hill (collectively, Meneses Parties), 

the recovery of which Salander obtained through lawsuits and 

wage garnishments. Because Salander had failed to register as a 

debt collector as required by Utah statute, the Meneses Parties 

filed suit, alleging that Salander had engaged in unconscionable 

and deceptive practices in violation of the Utah Consumer Sales 

Practices Act (UCSPA). The district court granted summary 

judgment in Salander’s favor after it determined that Salander 

was not required to register as a debt collector. Alternatively, the 
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court determined that a “violation” of the Utah Collection Agency 

Act (UCAA), “with nothing more,” does not support a cause of 

action under the UCSPA. We affirm the district court’s order on 

this alternative ground.

BACKGROUND

¶2 Salander—a Wisconsin limited liability company that does 

not own, maintain, or operate a physical office in Utah—is in the 

business of purchasing debts. Salander purchased the debts owed 

by the Meneses Parties and subsequently filed lawsuits against 

them to recover the debts. After obtaining judgments against the 

Meneses Parties, Salander sought to enforce those judgments 

through wage garnishment proceedings. 

¶3 In March 2020, the Meneses Parties sued Salander, alleging 

that “Salander engaged in a deceptive and unconscionable 

practice in violation” of the UCSPA. See Utah Code §§ 13-11-1 

to -23. Specifically, the Meneses Parties argued that Salander had 

engaged in debt collection “against vulnerable Utah consumers 

without the mandatory license required” by the UCAA. See id.

§§ 12-1-1 to -11 (2022).1 The then-effective statute required 

registration and bonding of any “collection agency, collection 

bureau, or collection office” that conducts business in Utah. See id.

§ 12-1-1. 

¶4 Salander was not registered or bonded as required by

section 12-1-1 when it brought suit or pursued garnishment 

proceedings against the Meneses Parties. The Meneses Parties did 

not raise this as a defense in the actions Salander filed against 

1. With the exception of its final section—authorizing creditors to 

recover collection fees in addition to other amounts owed by a 

debtor—the UCAA was recently repealed by the Utah 

Legislature. See Act of May 3, 2023, ch. 32, § 3, 65th Leg., Gen. 

Sess.; Act of May 3, 2023, ch. 213, § 1, 65th Leg., Gen. Sess.
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20210720-CA 3 2023 UT App 117

them, but in the later action now before us, they argued Salander 

was “a ‘collection agency, collection bureau, or collection office’

under [s]ection 12-1-1 and was therefore required to register and 

file a bond pursuant to the UCAA.” “[B]ecause Salander was not 

registered and did not have a bond as described in the UCAA,” 

the Meneses Parties asserted that “Salander lacked standing to file 

suit against them in a Utah court and was not entitled to recover 

the subject debts.” Given these circumstances, the Meneses Parties 

alleged “that Salander engaged in deceptive and/or 

unconscionable acts in violation” of the UCSPA.

¶5 On summary judgment, the district court ruled that the 

undisputed facts established that Salander (1) did “not conduct a 

collection agency, collection bureau, or collection office in this 

state”; (2) did “not engage in this state in the business of soliciting 

the right to collect or receive payment for another of any account, 

bill, or other indebtedness”; and (3) did “not advertise for or 

solicit in print the right to collect or receive payment for another 

of any account, bill, or other indebtedness within the meaning of 

[s]ection 12-1-1.” Given that Salander did not engage in any of 

these three categories of activity, the court concluded that 

“Salander was not required to register and file a bond pursuant to 

the UCAA prior to filing suit against” the Meneses Parties. And 

because the Meneses Parties’ claims were “based entirely on 

Salander’s alleged noncompliance with” the UCAA, they failed 

“as a matter of law.” 

¶6 The district court also ruled that even if Salander had 

violated the requirements of section 12-1-1, the Meneses Parties’ 

claims would “still fail and must be dismissed” because “[a]n 

alleged violation of the UCAA, with nothing more,” does not 

support a cause of action under the UCSPA “or a claim under 

common law.” The court stated that the Meneses Parties had 

improperly “attempt[ed] to shoehorn a violation of the UCAA, 

which only has criminal penalties” and does not provide a cause 

of action, “into either a violation of the UCSPA or [some] other 

State law cause of action.” Put succinctly, the court concluded that 
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20210720-CA 4 2023 UT App 117

the Meneses Parties “must establish more than a registration

violation of the UCAA to have a claim under the UCSPA.” 

ISSUES AND STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶7 The Meneses Parties argue that the district court erred in 

granting summary judgment in favor of Salander when it 

determined that Salander was not required to register under the 

UCAA. The Meneses Parties also maintain that the district court 

erred in granting summary judgment on the alternative ground

that a violation of the UCAA, standing alone, could not support 

UCSPA and common law claims. Whether a district court 

properly grants summary judgment is a conclusion of law 

reviewed for correctness. See Viertel v. Body Firm Aerobics LLC,

2022 UT App 96, ¶ 9, 516 P.3d 791. 

ANALYSIS

I. Whether Salander Was Bound by the Registration

Requirement

¶8 The UCAA’s registration requirement (with our 

bracketing) provided as follows:

No person shall 

[1] conduct a collection agency, collection 

bureau, or collection office in this state, or

[2] engage in this state in the business of 

soliciting the right to collect or receive 

payment for another of any account, bill, or 

other indebtedness, or 

[3] advertise for or solicit in print the right to 

collect or receive payment for another of any 

account, bill, or other indebtedness, 
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20210720-CA 5 2023 UT App 117

unless at the time 

[a] of conducting the collection agency, 

collection bureau, collection office, or 

collection business, or 

[b] of advertising or soliciting, 

that person or the person for whom he may be 

acting as agent, is registered with the Division of 

Corporations and Commercial Code and has on file 

a good and sufficient bond as hereinafter specified.

Utah Code § 12-1-1 (2022). 

¶9 The Meneses Parties rely on Lawrence v. First Financial

Investment Fund V, LLC, 444 F. Supp. 3d 1313 (D. Utah 2020), to 

support the position that Salander was bound by the UCAA’s 

registration requirement, even though Salander was recovering 

the debt it owned for its own benefit. Observing that the 

legislature had not defined “collection office,” the Lawrence court 

consulted “dictionaries to assess [the] ordinary meaning” of the 

term. Id. at 1320–21 (“None of the disputed terms are terms of art, 

so the court must turn to other sources, primarily dictionaries, to 

derive the relevant terms’ meanings.”). After conducting a survey 

of dictionary definitions, the Lawrence court concluded that a debt 

purchaser’s “activities fit squarely within the definition of

‘collection office.’ Indeed, the purchasing and collection of debt is

[a debt purchaser’s] raison d'être. . . . That [a debt purchaser]

collects debts for its own account does not obviously place it

outside [section 12-1-1’s] reach.” Id. at 1323; see also id. at 1328 

(“The court concludes [a debt buyer’s] business of buying debt 

originated by someone else and then collecting on that debt brings 

it within the Statute’s ambit.”).2

2. Other Utah federal cases have relied on Lawrence’s conclusion. 

See Chamberlain v. Crown Asset Mgmt., 608 F. Supp. 3d 1091, 1100, 

(continued...)
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20210720-CA 6 2023 UT App 117

¶10 But the statute is open to multiple interpretations. See id. at

1328 (noting that section 12-1-1 left “room for disagreement about 

the contours” of its meaning); see also Holmes v. Crown Asset Mgmt.,

LLC, No. 2:19-cv-00758, 2021 WL 3473050, at *4 (D. Utah Aug. 6, 

2021) (concluding that “[a]bsent clearer statutory language,” a 

debt buyer “could have reasonably believed that the UCAA could 

not properly be construed to limit” its ability to file suit in state 

court to collect on the debt it owned). Most notably, a reading of 

the wider statutory scheme of the UCAA suggests that its purpose 

was not to protect the interests of those who owed a debt but to 

protect the interests of those to whom the debt was owed, which 

supports the position that the registration requirement applied

only to those who collect debt on behalf of others. For example, 

the UCAA identified the purpose of obtaining the bond 

mentioned in section 12-1-1 as being not for the benefit of debtors 

but “to protect the persons for whom the collection is 

undertaken.” Utah Code § 12-1-2(2) (2022); see also id. § 12-1-8 

(stating that the collector could bring suit “at the direction” of the 

debt originator to recover the debt). From this perspective, the 

registration and bonding requirement would appear to have 

applied to only traditional debt collectors (i.e., those who collect 

debt owed to a third party) rather than to a party like Salander, 

which buys debts and attempts to directly recover the amounts

owed for itself.

¶11 But we do not need to decide, in the context of this case, 

whether we think Lawrence was correctly decided. We will assume

1104 (D. Utah 2022); Cotte v. CVI SGP Acquisition Trust, No. 2:21-

cv-00299-JNP-DAO, 2022 WL 464307, at *2 (D. Utah Feb. 15, 2022).

In another case, the federal district court determined that section

12-1-1 applied to a “collection agency” that purchased “debts

from various lending agencies.” Buhler v. BCG Equities, LLC, No. 

2:19-cv-00814-DAK, 2020 WL 888733, at *1–2 (D. Utah Feb. 24, 

2020).
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without deciding that the registration requirement applied to 

companies whose business is to buy and recover debt.3 

II. Whether a UCAA Registration Violation Provides an 

Independent Basis for a Cause of Action Under the UCSPA or 

Common Law

¶12 Even if the registration requirement applied to Salander, 

the Meneses Parties still must show that a violation of this 

requirement supports a cause of action under either the UCSPA 

or common law. We are not persuaded they have done so.

¶13 The UCAA carried only a criminal penalty for debt 

collectors who failed to comply with its registration and bonding 

requirement: “Any person, member of a partnership, or officer of 

any association or corporation who fails to comply with any 

provision of this title is guilty of a class A misdemeanor.” Utah 

Code § 12-1-6 (2022). 

¶14 Noting the lack of a private right of action in the UCAA, 

the district court concluded that “[e]ven if Salander was required 

to register and file a bond pursuant to the UCAA, . . . all of [the 

Meneses Parties’] claims still fail and must be dismissed.” It went 

on to explain that an “alleged violation of the UCAA, with 

3. Salander also argues that the UCAA registration requirement 

applied only to businesses that have a physical location in Utah. 

We do not share this view. It would make little sense to say that a 

collection agency could free itself of the registration and bonding 

requirements imposed by the UCAA simply by locating its office 

a few feet over the border in, say, Nevada and then conducting all 

of its business in Utah. Under the plain meaning of the statute, a 

collection agency could certainly “conduct” a collection business 

in Utah without having an office in the state. See Utah Code § 12-

1-1 (2022). And with the act of so “conducting” its business in 

Utah, the collection business would accordingly be governed by 

the UCAA. See id. 
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nothing more, does not provide” the basis for a cause of action or 

a claim under common law, concluding that the Meneses Parties 

“may not attempt to shoehorn a violation of the UCAA . . . into 

either a violation of the UCSPA or any other State law cause of 

action, including a cause of action for unjust enrichment or 

intrusion upon seclusion.”

¶15 To fill this apparent lacuna, the Meneses Parties assert their 

claims were not brought under the UCAA. Instead, they argue 

that the criminal act associated with the violation of the UCAA, see

id., not the UCAA itself, supports civil liability. More specifically, 

the Meneses Parties argue that “unlawful debt collection has 

routinely been found to be deceptive and unconscionable” under 

the UCSPA. They assert that “[e]ven if a statute does not provide 

members of the public a direct enforcement mechanism, the 

statutory violation can still substantiate an independent claim 

under common law, equity, or a statute that does provide” a cause 

of action. Thus, the Meneses Parties argue that “[w]hether the 

UCAA contains a private cause of action is irrelevant here because 

[they] do not allege a claim under the UCAA. . . . Rather, [they] 

rely on the UCAA violation, in part, to establish independent 

claims for unjust enrichment [and] intrusion upon seclusion . . . 

under the UCSPA.” In support of this position, the Meneses 

Parties assert that statutory violations routinely serve “as 

evidence of negligence,” such as when “traffic law violations . . . 

support . . . negligence claims related to auto accidents.” 

Moreover, the Meneses Parties argue that the Division of 

Consumer Protection—which is identified as the “[e]nforcing 

authority” for the UCSPA, see Utah Code §§ 13-11-3(3), -17(4)(a)—

has determined that “[i]t shall be a deceptive act or practice in 

connection with a consumer transaction . . . for a supplier to . . . 

[m]isrepresent that the supplier has the particular license, bond, 

insurance, qualifications, or expertise that is related to the work 

to be performed,” Utah Admin. Code R152-11-5(B)(5). 

¶16 We are unpersuaded by this reasoning. In spite of the 

Meneses Parties’ assertion that their claims do not sound in the 
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20210720-CA 9 2023 UT App 117

UCAA, the only violation they identify Salander as having 

committed is failing to register and bond under the UCAA. But a 

UCAA violation is not enough to support a cause of action under 

the UCSPA or the common law doctrines they invoke. “To hold 

that [a debt buyer’s] failure to disclose its unregistered status to 

[debtors] is alone enough to constitute a UCSPA violation would 

have the same effect as transforming a violation of the UCAA” 

into a cause of action. Buhler v. BCG Equities, LLC, No. 2:19-cv00814-DAK, 2020 WL 888733, at *5 (D. Utah Feb. 24, 2020). “Such 

a holding would not require a [debtor] to allege anything beyond 

a violation of the UCAA’s registration provision.” Id.

¶17 We acknowledge that UCAA noncompliance could 

theoretically be part of the basis for a claim under the UCSPA or 

common law. See id. (“Indeed, it may be a violation of the UCSPA 

if a debt collector affirmatively misrepresented its registration 

status or evidence is presented that an agency concealed its 

registration status with knowledge or intent to deceive a 

debtor.”). But even if a debt collector’s misrepresentation 

regarding its UCAA registration status could—in an appropriate 

case—constitute a violation of the UCSPA, the Meneses Parties 

have failed to demonstrate such a violation here. While the 

Meneses Parties repeatedly alleged in their complaint before the 

district court that “Salander misrepresented its licensure status to 

debtors,” they failed to plead any facts to support this allegation. 

The only improper actions that the Meneses Parties identify in 

their factual pleadings—actions Salander does not dispute—is 

that Salander engaged in the “business of collecting debts 

acquired in default and filed collection lawsuits in Utah courts” 

without first having obtained “the mandatory license required by 

Utah law” pursuant to section 12-1-1. Similarly, the Meneses 

Parties’ claim of unjust enrichment was based on Salander’s 

failure “to obtain a license to act as a collection agency.” And the 

intrusion upon seclusion claims were also based on Salander’s 

failure to obtain a license. No other act of wrongdoing on the part 

of Salander is asserted in the complaint or, more importantly, in 
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20210720-CA 10 2023 UT App 117

the factual statement filed in opposition to Salander’s summary 

judgment motion. Put simply, the Meneses Parties allege that 

Salander’s only wrong act was its failure to comply with the 

UCAA’s registration requirement, not that Salander 

misrepresented this status to them or that they were somehow 

harmed by any such misrepresentation.

4

¶18 But a UCAA registration violation, standing alone, is—as 

the district court correctly concluded—not enough. To support a 

cause of action under the UCSPA or common law, the Meneses 

Parties needed to claim something more, such as an affirmative 

misrepresentation. But that is not what Salander purportedly did 

here. 

¶19 The Meneses Parties never claim that Salander made any 

affirmative statements about its registration and bonding status 

under section 12-1-1. They have presented no factual claims that 

Salander ever affirmatively represented that it was operating as a 

collection agency and was accordingly bound by the UCAA’s 

registration requirement. As the Meneses Parties argued below, 

Salander did represent that it had “the same right to collect on 

4. In their brief on appeal, the Meneses Parties claim Salander 

“violated the UCSPA through false and misleading 

misrepresentation and omissions concerning its failure to register 

and post a bond.” And they contend that “unlicensed debt 

collection, which inherently misrepresents the collector’s ability 

to lawfully enforce the debt, is deceptive and unconscionable.” 

Further, they argue that “criminal acts,” like a misdemeanor for

not complying with the UCAA, are “deceptive and 

unconscionable.” They assert that by filing debt collection actions, 

“Salander implicitly represented it was entitled to collect the 

debt,” which was false and therefore deceptive because it could 

not legally do so given its violation of the UCAA. But in the end, 

the Meneses Parties do not carry their burden of persuasion on 

appeal with respect to any of these precepts.
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20210720-CA 11 2023 UT App 117

[purchased] debt as the original creditor.”5 But Salander’s 

representation that it had the right to collect on a debt it owned is 

not the same as Salander representing that it was a debt collector 

operating in full compliance with the laws of Utah. Indeed, 

Salander—not knowing (given the UCAA’s ambiguity on the 

point) that it was required to register and bond—could hardly be 

said to have withheld its registration status since there was no 

information for Salander to withhold from the Meneses Parties.6

¶20 By the Meneses Parties’ own estimation—namely, that 

Salander told debtors that it had the “same right . . . as the original 

creditor” to recover debt it owned—Salander represented that it 

was the legitimate holder of debt and was collecting on the debt 

in its own name, not necessarily that it was a debt collector 

operating in compliance with Utah law. Without something 

beyond a mere violation of the UCAA, the Meneses Parties simply 

do not have a cause of action available to them. Federal courts 

considering this question have consistently come to the same 

conclusion. See, e.g., Buhler, 2020 WL 888733, at *5 (“[A] debt 

collector must engage in unfair or misleading conduct beyond what 

the UCAA prohibits to support a finding that a collection agency 

also violated the UCSPA.” (emphasis added)); Gunther v. Midland 

5. The Meneses Parties argued that this statement amounted to an 

“affirmative misrepresentation” because, they argue, Salander 

“did not have the same right to collect” the debt it purchased 

when it “had no right to collect the debt in Utah.” We see the 

statement differently. It is difficult to characterize it as an 

“affirmative misrepresentation” when the applicability of section 

12-1-1 to third-party debt buyers was open to question. See supra

¶ 10.

6. This same reasoning applies to the Meneses Parties’ common 

law claims: a violation of the UCAA, standing alone, does not 

provide support for the Meneses Parties’ common law causes of 

action. 
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20210720-CA 12 2023 UT App 117

Credit Mgmt., Inc., No. 2:17-cv-704, 2018 WL 4621764, at *9 (D. 

Utah Sept. 26, 2018) (rejecting an argument that “the unlawful 

collection of debts under the UCAA results in a violation of the 

UCSPA since it bars unfair or deceptive practices . . . because the 

court cannot transform a (purported) violation” of the UCAA into 

a cause of action under the UCSPA (cleaned up)).

¶21 In sum, the Meneses Parties have not alleged Salander did 

anything wrong apart from violating the UCAA’s registration 

requirement. Without some other affirmative misrepresentation 

or attempt to conceal its registration status on the part of Salander, 

saying that a UCAA violation is enough to support a UCSPA or 

common law claim is an improper attempt to “transform[] a 

violation of the UCAA” into a cause of action. See Buhler, 2020 WL 

888733, at *5. Thus, the Meneses Parties have failed to support 

their claim that Salander’s violation of the UCAA’s registration 

requirement is sufficient to sustain a cause of action under the 

UCSPA or common law. Accordingly, we conclude that the 

district court properly dismissed their claims on summary 

judgment under the alternative ground it identified. 

CONCLUSION

¶22 Even assuming that Salander was bound by the UCAA’s 

registration requirement, its failure to comply with that

requirement does not, without more, support a cause of action

under the UCSPA or common law. Accordingly, we affirm the 

district court’s grant of summary judgment.