Opinion ID: 563740
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Duty to Reinvestigate

Text: 23 After a credit report has been prepared on a consumer, a credit reporting agency retains a duty under section 611(a) of FCRA to make reasonable efforts to investigate and correct inaccurate or incomplete information brought to its attention by the consumer. When a consumer brings a claim for violation of this duty, a court is generally called upon to determine whether the credit reporting agency could have discovered an error in a particular report through a reasonable investigation. 22 Thus, a section 611(a) claim is properly raised when a particular credit report contains a factual deficiency or error that could have been remedied by uncovering additional facts that provide a more accurate representation about a particular entry. 24 In this case, however, no additional amount of factual investigation by CBI would have revealed any inaccuracy in its reporting of the GMAC account because there was none. Rather, as we noted above, Cahlin claims in essence that CBI erroneously mischaracterized and misinterpreted the charge off and later settlement of his debt to GMAC as being a negative credit event. That is, he argues that he should have been given a clean slate on his credit report after he settled the debt with GMAC's collection attorney. A consumer, however, cannot bring a section 611(a) claim against a credit reporting agency when it exercises its independent professional judgment, based on full information, as to how a particular account should be reported on a credit report. In this case, CBI initially reported that the GMAC account was a charged off account with an outstanding balance and eventually acceded to GMAC's directives that Cahlin's account be rehabilitated to avoid litigation. No reasonable investigation on the part of CBI could have uncovered any inaccuracy in Cahlin's report because there was never any factual deficiency in the report. 23 As we noted earlier, GMAC's representatives testified that CBI's reporting of Cahlin's account was accurate as of August, 1986 and that the same reporting would continue to be accurate today. We therefore find that the district court properly granted summary judgment to CBI on Cahlin's section 611(a) claim.