Court Opinion

ID: 9490230
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:36:49.694113+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:58.035532
License: Public Domain

BAUER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. Judge Eschbaeh has written a powerful opinion that I find myself unable to join. The notion that Congress, in passing the FDCPA, had in mind the protection of those who give bad checks for goods and services is one I cannot in conscience join.
In this position I am comforted by several things, not the least is the knowledge that the act itself does not mandate such a result; indeed, if it did, the opinion could have consisted of a paragraph or two pointing out the mandate. A second and, it seems to me, significant point also appears in the majority opinion: “No Circuit Court has had occasion to pass on whether a dishonored check creates a ‘debt’ under the FDCPA.” Indeed they have not, and I believe for good reason — it doesn’t apply.
Checks are, in the majority of cases, used to pay for bills already outstanding; that is to say, in response to bills sent asking for payment for goods and services delivered some time in the past; a transaction that did not contemplate simultaneous delivery and payment. In short, to pay a bill where credit has already, explicitly or implicitly, been extended. A ease can be made for the position that, if the check so used is drawn on an account with insufficient funds — or no funds at all — the payee is in no worse position than before the dishonored instrument was delivered.1
*1331No ease can be made that would demonstrate that checks given in immediate payment of goods and services are “debts” contemplated by the act or that acceptance of the instrument was either a voluntary assumption of a credit transaction or anything other than an accommodation to the check writer. The seller is simply relying on the warrant implied in the delivery of the check that the writer has funds in the institution drawn upon and that the institution will immediately honor the cheek, when presented, by payment in legal tender. So basic is this concept that Black’s Law Dictionary gives both the classic definition of “check” as “[a] draft drawn upon a bank and payable on demand, signed by the maker or drawer, containing an unconditional promise to pay a sum certain in money to the order of the payee” and the equally true definition of “bad cheek”: “A check which is dishonored on presentation for payment because of no, or insufficient, funds or closed bank account. Writing or passing of bad checks is a misdemeanor in most states.”
In fact, a great number of retail establishments (and deliverers of services as opposed to goods) will not honor personal checks. And those that do are relying on the warrant of the maker that the money will be found forthwith on presentation. (Many, if not most, general retail transactions presently involve commercial credit cards; Visa, Mast-ercard or the like. And in those transactions, the credit relationship is between the issuer of the card — generally a bank — and the card holder. The' purveyor of goods and services gets paid without question from the bank because the validity of the card can be verified before acceptance.)
When accepting a check, the payee is peculiarly at the mercy of the maker; only the maker and the bank know whether money is available to pay the amount of the note and the banker is forbidden to disclose the condition of the account unless called upon to honor the draft (or certify it, which amounts to the same thing). So the recipient must rely on the maker’s trustworthiness. If anyone needs protection, it is the provider of goods and services who accepts a cheek in exchange.
Moreover, unlike the extender of credit, the payee of a bad check incurs an absolute loss because his banker will charge a penalty for processing a dishonored check and the payee has lost the use of the money he was entitled to receive. And, of course, if he was relying on the uncollected funds for his own cash-flow purposes, he may very well do serious harm to his own credit rating.
Apart from all of that, I believe that the majority opinion gives too little weight to the reasoning of Zimmerman v. HBO Affiliate, 834 F.2d 1163 (3rd Cir.1987). It is not sufficient to point out that Zimmerman involved a theft. The majority says “and although a thief undoubtedly has an obligation to pay for the goods or services he steals, the FDCPA limits its reach to those obligations to pay arising from consensual transactions, where parties negotiate or contract for consumer related goods or services. See, e.g., Shorts v. Palmer, 155 F.R.D. 172, 175-76 (S.D.Ohio 1994) (obligation to pay for shoplifted merchandise not a ‘debt’ under the FDCPA because ‘plaintiff has never had a contractual arrangement of any kind with any of the defendants.’).” Where a contract of sale is goods-for-money, the acceptance of a check is not a consent to receive something less than money; it is a convenience to the maker not to require legal tender. The giving of a bad check for goods or services differs from shoplifting only in degree, not in kind; in either event, it is a theft.
Nor is it an answer to say that the fraud involving dishonored checks is not always “criminal or tortious” because “fraud is a specific intent crime”.2 What this says is that when the defense of lack of bad intent is raised, the government (not the payee of the *1332check who, for criminal prosecution purposes, is only a witness to the crime) must prove intent to defraud. Most jurisdictions have over the years taken the position that issuing a cheek without having sufficient monies on deposit to support the draft is prima facie evidence of fraud.3 It is up to the writer to produce some basis for the belief that no fraud was intended. (It is, of course, only a burden of production, not of persuasion, but it does not alter the basic rule that a bad check creates an inference of fraud.)
I do not think that one can observe a “to let” sign, move into an empty apartment and then demand a thirty-day notice before an eviction can proceed. One cannot create a landlord-tenant relationship unless both parties agree. Nor, it seems to me, can one create a debtor-creditor relationship without the agreement of both parties. If I choose not to be a creditor, you cannot force me into that position.4
Absent a creditor-debtor relationship voluntarily assumed there is no “debtor” protected by the FDCPA. The victim is not the deliverer of the bad check; it is the recipient and, if protection is to be provided, it should be to him. The FDCPA, I believe, does not cover bad checks given for goods and services. It is not necessary in this case to decide whether bad checks given for an existing debt come under the protection of the act. That is not the issue.
I would reverse the judgment.

. In a better position, in some small respect: the maker of the check can sue on the instrument itself or it can be used as an acknowledgement of the debt and the amount, both items of which might have been disputed on a simple suit to collect the debt. And, at any rate, the deliverer intended to extend credit when he failed to demand cash or check on delivery (unless the goods were sent C.O.D., of course).

. Theft, like fraud, is a specific intent crime. To obtain a conviction, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant intended to deprive the owner permanently of some property. Someone who appears to have shoplifted may then, of course, have a valid defense — that he did not act with the requisite intent. One who walks out of a country store with a can of tunafish in his pocket that he forgot to pay for has not committed theft. The facts, however, may have terrible consequences before the defense can be raised. See, e.g., My Cousin Vihny, at Local Blockbuster Video Rental Store.

. In Illinois, for instance, the government indicted and convicted one Kevin Sumner by showing that Sumner did not have adequate funds on deposit on either the day of issuance or the day of presenting the check. The court said "Sumner, while agreeing that the State presented enough evidence to establish a statutorily adequate prime facie case, argues that his own testimony was legally sufficient to establish a reasonable defense showing that he lacked the necessary intent to defraud. Therefore, Sumner claims, the presumption of guilt established by the State's prima facie case was rebutted, and the prosecution was required to refute his defense by presenting convincing proof that Sumner had the requisite intent to defraud when he issued the check in question. We agree with Sumner." (emphasis added) People of the State of Illinois v. Sumner, 107 IlI.App.3d 368, 370, 63 Ill.Dec. 137, 437 N.E.2d 786 (1st Dist.1982).

. I do not think that a purchaser of goods can force a seller to become a creditor by delivering a bad check in payment of goods any more than I believe a seller of goods can force anyone into a position of being a debtor simply by delivering goods he has not agreed to accept. The relationship of seller-buyer is much different from creditor-debtor. The former relation can blossom into the latter only when done so by voluntary acts of both parties. When a bad check is delivered for goods or services it creates a debt by tortious conduct, not a debt by contract.