Opinion ID: 2976323
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The LLC’s collection letter

Text: This court has not previously had occasion to decide an “attorney letterhead” case under the FDCPA. Debt collectors are prohibited by the FDCPA from using “any false, deceptive, or misleading representation or means in connection with the collection of any debt.” 15 U.S.C. § 1692e. Specifically at issue in this appeal is 15 U.S.C. § 1692e(3), which prohibits debt collectors from creating “[t]he false representation or implication that any individual is an attorney or that any communication is from an attorney.” The statute imposes strict liability for violations. 15 U.S.C. § 1692k(a). An exception to strict liability exists only where a debt collector commits a violation resulting from a “bona fide error.” 15 U.S.C. § 1692k(c). This court has previously adopted the “least-sophisticated-consumer” test for determining whether a debt collector’s practice is deceptive. Lewis v. ACB Bus. Servs., Inc., 135 F.3d 389, 400 (6th Cir. 1998) (analyzing an alleged violation of 15 U.S.C. § 1692e(10) under the leastsophisticated-consumer test). The least-sophisticated-consumer test is objective and is designed “to ensure that the FDCPA protects all consumers, the gullible as well as the shrewd.” Fed. Home Loan Mortgage Corp. v. Lamar, 503 F.3d 504, 509 (6th Cir. 2007) (quoting Clomon v. Jackson, 988 F.2d 1314, 1318 (2d Cir. 1993)). “[A]lthough this standard protects naive consumers, it also prevents liability for bizarre or idiosyncratic interpretations of collection notices by preserving a quotient of reasonableness and presuming a basic level of understanding and willingness to read with care.” Id. at 509-10 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Margelefsky contends that he personally had no involvement in sending the letter to Kistner. But Kistner asserts that six aspects of the letter objectively signal to the least sophisticated consumer that the letter is from an attorney, despite Margelefsky’s lack of personal involvement with it: (1) the letterhead reads “Law offices of Michael P. Margelefsky, LLC,” (2) the letter informs the consumer that the account “has been referred to this office,” (3) the letter includes a detachable payment voucher with instructions to “MAKE CHECK OR MONEY ORDER PAYABLE TO MICHAEL P. MARGELEFSKY,” (4) the payment voucher is to be returned to “THE LAW OFFICES OF MICHAEL P. MARGELEFSKY, LLC,” (5) there is no disclaimer of attorney involvement in the letter, and (6) the signature block states “ACCOUNT REPRESENTATIVE, the law offices of MICHAEL P. MARGELEFSKY, LLC.” In granting summary judgment to Margelefsky on Kistner’s § 1692e(3) claim, the district court relied exclusively on the case of Rumpler v. Phillips & Cohen Associates, Ltd., 219 F. Supp. 2d 251 (E.D.N.Y. 2002). The form collection notice in Rumpler was on the company letterhead of Phillips & Cohen Associates (P & C) and bore a signature line reading “Adam S. Cohen, Esq., Executive Vice President.” Id. at 253. Utilizing the least-sophisticated-consumer test, the court concluded that such a consumer “could not reasonably interpret the Letter as having been issued by an attorney” because “the Letter in this case is on P & C’s letterhead, which nowhere states either ‘Attorney at Law’ or ‘General Counsel,’ or gives any other indication that it came from an attorney or a law firm.” Id. at 257. Rather, “[t]he Letter simply recites the name of a debt collection business.” Id. Rumpler argued, however, that the inclusion of “Esq.” after Cohen’s name indicated that the letter had been sent by an attorney. Id. The district court rejected Rumpler’s argument because “any effect in the reader’s mind caused by including ‘Esq.’ after Cohen’s name is blunted by the inclusion of the phrase ‘Executive Vice President’ immediately below.” Id. In the present case, the district No. 07-3134 Kistner v. The Law Offices of Michael P. Margelefsky et al. Page 7 court likewise concluded that “any effect in the reader’s mind caused by the letterhead ‘Law Offices of Michael P. Margelefsky, LLC,’ or any of the other arguments put forth by Plaintiff, is similarly ‘blunted’ by the specific language used in the notice and the fact that it was signed ‘ACCOUNT REPRESENTATIVE.’” We respectfully disagree. Contrary to the statement by the district court that the letter in Rumpler “was on law firm letterhead,” the Rumpler court explicitly said that the letter was “on P & C’s letterhead, which nowhere states either ‘Attorney at Law’ or ‘General Counsel,’ or gives any other indication that it came from an attorney or a law firm.” 219 F. Supp. 2d at 257 (emphasis added). In other words, the least sophisticated consumer looking at the letterhead in Rumpler would see no indication that the letter had been sent from a law firm. The letter from the LLC, in contrast, gives repeated indications that it came from a law firm. Specifically, the words “law offices” appear in the letterhead, the signature block, and on the remittance voucher. The purpose of the Rumpler court’s discussion of the letterhead was to distinguish the case from Clomon v. Jackson, 988 F.2d 1314 (2d Cir. 1993). In Clomon, the attorney in question sent a series of letters to Clomon on a letterhead that said “P.D. Jackson, G.C., Attorney-at-Law, Offices of General Counsel.” The letters were also signed, albeit with a “mechanically reproduced facsimile of the signature,” by “P.D. Jackson, Attorney at Law, General Counsel, NCB Collection Services.” Jackson was employed part-time as the general counsel for NCB Collection Services, and he was, in fact, a licensed attorney. The Clomon court found that, on the basis of Jackson’s letterhead and signature, the letters would give the least sophisticated consumer “the impression that the letters were communications from an attorney.” Id. at 1320. In concluding that summary judgment was properly granted to the plaintiff, the court explained that this impression was false and misleading because the fact that “Jackson played virtually no day-to-day role in the debt collection process supports the conclusion that the collection letters were not ‘from’ Jackson in any meaningful sense of that word.” Id. Jackson in fact admitted that [he] did not review each debtor’s file; he did not determine when particular letters should be sent; he did not approve the sending of particular letters based upon the recommendations of others; and he did not see particular letters before they were sent—indeed, he did not even know the identities of the persons to whom the letters were issued. Id. Margelefsky, likewise, admitted in his deposition that he did not review Kistner’s file, did not determine whether particular letters should be sent, and did not know the identities of the persons to whom the letters were sent. So if the letter sent to Kistner would give the least sophisticated consumer “the impression that the letter[] [was a] communication[] from an attorney,” then that impression was false. See Clomon, 988 F.2d at 1320. We conclude that Margelefsky and the district court have ascribed too much significance to the inclusion in the Kistner letter of the phrase “ACCOUNT REPRESENTATIVE.” Unlike the use of the title “Executive Vice President” in Rumpler, the inclusion of “Account Representative” does not necessarily blunt “any effect in the reader’s mind caused by” the repeated references to “The Law Offices of Michael P. Margelefsky” and the payment voucher directing remittance to “Michael P. Margelefsky.” See Rumpler, 219 F. Supp. 2d at 257. This last fact is especially troubling despite Margelefsky’s attempt to explain it away in a footnote in his brief as follows: The notice directs Kistner to return payment to “THE LAW OFFICES OF MICHAEL P. MARGELEFSKY, LLC” on the return receipt, and shortens the debt No. 07-3134 Kistner v. The Law Offices of Michael P. Margelefsky et al. Page 8 collection agency’s name in the payment instructions and, for simplification, instructs Kistner to make checks payable to Michael P. Margelefsky. But the argument that Margelefsky’s name appears for “simplification” purposes rings hollow because it is contradicted by Margelefsky’s own deposition testimony, where he states that the appearance of his name on the payment voucher is a misprint that he did not notice until the deposition. We conclude that the impression left by the collection letter in this case falls somewhere in between the letter in Clomon and the letter in Rumpler. The LLC’s letter is printed on law firm letterhead, it makes repeated reference to a law firm, and it directs remittance to an individually named lawyer. But it also explicitly states that it is from a debt collector and is “signed” by an unnamed “Account Representative.” Based on these conflicting aspects of the letter, we conclude that the district court erred in granting summary judgment to Margelefsky, but we will not go to the other extreme either by granting summary judgment to Kistner. Instead, a jury should determine whether the letter is deceptive and misleading—specifically, whether the letter gives the impression that it is from an attorney even though it is not. Further support for remanding the case for trial can be found in another approach for analyzing claims under the FDCPA. In Clomon, the court noted that “courts have held that collection notices can be deceptive if they are open to more than one reasonable interpretation, at least one of which is inaccurate.” 988 F.2d at 1319. In Russell v. Equifax A.R.S., 74 F.3d 30, 34-35 (2d Cir. 1996), the collection notice presented the debtor “with two different and conflicting statements,” and the court concluded that “[b]ecause the initial collection notice . . . was reasonably susceptible to an inaccurate reading, it was also deceptive within the meaning of the Act.” The Third Circuit has also reversed the grant of a motion to dismiss because the plaintiff properly stated a claim for “false, deceptive, or misleading representation” under 15 U.S.C. § 1692e and because further proceedings were needed to determine if the inaccurate reading was “‘reasonable’ in light of the facts of this case.” Brown v. Card Serv. Ctr., 464 F.3d 450, 455 (3d Cir. 2006). Margelefsky argues that because no court has applied the “more than one reasonable interpretation” standard to claimed violations of § 1692e(3), the standard is somehow inapplicable as a matter of law. But there is nothing in Clomon or in any of the cases that have applied the standard to suggest that it is not equally applicable to subsection three of § 1692e. In fact, § 1692e prohibits debt collectors from using “any false, deceptive, or misleading representation or means in connection with the collection of any debt,” and lays out specific violations of the section, including subsection three, related to attorney communications. We therefore believe that the “more than one reasonable interpretation” standard is applicable to the entirety of § 1692e as a useful tool in analyzing the “least-sophisticated-consumer” test. See Clomon, 988 F.2d at 1319 (discussing the “more than one reasonable interpretation” test as one of the “variety of ways” in which courts attempt to protect consumers under the leastsophisticated-consumer standard). Accordingly, the question for the jury becomes whether one can reasonably conclude that the letter sent to Kistner is susceptible to a reading by the least sophisticated consumer that it is from an attorney, even though Margelefsky has admitted that he had no direct role in sending the letter.