Court Opinion

ID: 9368689
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-02-06 18:01:00.200707+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:10.065031
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 21-13879     Document: 50-1      Date Filed: 02/06/2023    Page: 1 of 18

                                                             [PUBLISH]
                                     In the
                 United States Court of Appeals
                          For the Eleventh Circuit

                            ____________________

                                  No. 21-13879
                            ____________________

        GARY WALTERS,
                                                        Plaintiff-Appellant,
        versus
        FAST AC, LLC,
        Florida limited liability company,
        FTL CAPITAL PARTNERS, LLC,
        foreign limited liability company,
        d.b.a. FTL Capital Finance,

                                                    Defendants-Appellees.

                            ____________________
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        2                     Opinion of the Court                21-13879

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                       for the Middle District of Florida
                   D.C. Docket No. 2:19-cv-00070-JLB-MRM
                           ____________________

        Before LAGOA, BRASHER, and ED CARNES, Circuit Judges.
        BRASHER, Circuit Judge:
               This appeal is about Article III standing. Gary Walters
        agreed to purchase air conditioning repairs he could not afford
        from Fast AC, LLC, by taking out a loan with FTL Capital Partners,
        LLC. He did so after a Fast AC employee lied about the price of
        FTL’s loan and prevented Walters from viewing FTL’s loan paper-
        work. The Truth in Lending Act (“TILA”), 15 U.S.C. § 1601 et seq.,
        requires a lender like FTL to provide certain disclosures about the
        cost of the loan. Walters sued FTL, claiming that it violated TILA
        because it did not provide him those disclosures. According to Wal-
        ters, had he received the proper disclosures, he would not have ac-
        cepted the loan.
                The only question on appeal is whether Walters has stand-
        ing to bring this TILA claim against FTL. According to FTL, Wal-
        ters’s injuries are not traceable to FTL’s disclosure paperwork be-
        cause Fast AC never showed Walters any paperwork. We agree
        that, if Fast AC’s conduct was independent of FTL, then Walters’s
        injuries are not traceable to FTL. But Walters argues that Fast AC
        is not independent of FTL because Fast AC was acting as FTL’s
        agent. Under this agency theory of liability, Walters argues that
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        21-13879               Opinion of the Court                       3

        FTL is liable under TILA for Fast AC’s failure to provide the re-
        quired disclosures. Because we conclude that Walters has standing
        to raise this agency-based TILA claim against FTL, we reverse.
                                      I.

               TILA imposes “mandatory disclosure requirements on
        those who extend credit to consumers in the American market.”
        Mourning v. Fam. Publ’ns. Serv., Inc., 411 U.S. 356, 363 (1973). The
        specific disclosures TILA requires vary depending on whether the
        credit provided is “closed-end” or “open-end.” The details of the
        two credit types and their respective disclosure obligations are un-
        important here. Suffice it to say that TILA requires lenders extend-
        ing closed-end credit (but not those extending open-end credit) to
        disclose, among other things, the number of monthly payments,
        the cost of those payments, and the total loan amount. See 15
        U.S.C. § 1638(a); 12 C.F.R. § 1026.18.
               FTL Capital Partners, LLC finances home-improvement
        loans for heating and air conditioning products. FTL partners with
        contractors who provide those products to customers who wish to
        pay for the contractor’s products through financing. Customers
        who want to pay for a contractor’s services through financing must
        apply to FTL. If FTL approves the application, FTL sends loan doc-
        uments, including applicable disclosures, to the customer’s per-
        sonal email. Customers must answer security verification ques-
        tions before they can access the loan documents in their inbox.
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        4                      Opinion of the Court                21-13879

               Fast AC, LLC was an FTL-registered contractor from 2016
        until 2019, when it was “expelled” for falsely representing to FTL
        “various times” that it had completed installation work it never
        performed. During that time, Fast AC employees would go to con-
        sumers’ homes to sell them its heating and cooling services on
        credit financed by FTL.
               One of those consumers was Gary Walters, a 70-year-old,
        retired army veteran who lives in Florida with his wife. Walters
        suffers from Parkinson’s disease and other health issues. He cannot
        walk long distances and uses a wheelchair.
               Because we are reviewing a grant of summary judgment, we
        accept Walters’s testimony as true, “affording all justifiable infer-
        ences” to Walters. Sconiers v. Lockhart, 946 F.3d 1256, 1260 (11th
        Cir. 2020). According to Walters, Fast AC contacted him, offering
        to conduct a free cleaning and inspection of Walters’s AC unit. Fast
        AC sent its employee, Mike, to Walters’s home to perform the
        work. After spending a few minutes in Walters’s attic (with no tools
        or cleaning supplies), Mike told Walters that his unit’s ductwork
        was “shot” and that, if Walters did not replace it “real soon,” he
        would “have really bad problems.” The total cost of replacing the
        ductwork was $5,500—more than Walters could afford—but Mike
        falsely told Walters that it would cost only $50 a month if he se-
        cured financing with FTL.
               Walters reluctantly agreed. But Walters did not himself fill
        out FTL’s credit application or even see any of the loan paperwork.
        Instead, Mike got on Walters’s computer and “took care” of all the
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        21-13879               Opinion of the Court                       5

        necessary financing paperwork for him by completing, e-signing,
        and submitting the loan application in Walters’s name, thereby
        concealing FTL’s loan documents from him.
                Before Fast AC began the ductwork repair, Walters changed
        his mind and decided to cancel the job. Although he was able to
        cancel the repairs themselves, Fast AC’s representative told him
        that, to cancel the financing agreement, Walters would have to
        “call the finance company” directly. Over the next several weeks,
        there was an unproductive back-and-forth between Walters, Fast
        AC, and FTL via telephone. FTL sent Walters bills, past-due no-
        tices, and demand letters to pay for the ductwork repair that Fast
        AC never performed. Walters never paid FTL, but FTL did not re-
        lease him from the loan. Instead, FTL reported negative payment
        activity on Walters’s credit report to TransUnion.
               Walters testified in his deposition that the unpaid loan neg-
        atively impacted his credit score and prevented him from purchas-
        ing a truck and from refinancing his home. Additionally, Walters
        said he spent money faxing documents to his attorney and experi-
        enced emotional distress because of the disputed debt.
               Walters sued Fast AC and FTL in the Middle District of Flor-
        ida. He asserted various state law consumer protection claims
        against Fast AC. Against FTL, he asserted state law claims and one
        federal TILA claim. Walters’s TILA claim against FTL is the sole
        basis for federal subject matter jurisdiction over his suit. See 28
        U.S.C. § § 1331, 1367(a). On the merits of that claim, Walters al-
        leged that his loan from FTL was a closed-end transaction, but that
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        6                      Opinion of the Court                 21-13879

        FTL did not disclose the loan amount, finance charge, or monthly
        payments. FTL’s credit agreement—which Walters never saw—in-
        cluded only open-end disclosures.
                The district court concluded that Walters lacked standing to
        bring his TILA claim and granted summary judgment for FTL. Spe-
        cifically, the district court determined that Walters had not suffered
        an injury in fact because his injuries were not caused by FTL’s TILA
        violation. Because Walters’s TILA claim against FTL was the only
        claim over which the district court had original jurisdiction, the
        court did not exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Walters’s re-
        maining state law claims against Fast AC and FTL. See 28 U.S.C.
        § 1367(a). In an order denying Walters’s motion for reconsidera-
        tion, the district court rejected Walters’s argument that its sum-
        mary judgment order had conflated the injury-in-fact element with
        traceability. The district court also concluded that Walters had not
        alleged in his complaint that Fast AC was acting as FTL’s agent to
        provide the required disclosures.
               Walters appealed.
                                       II.

               We must decide whether Walters has standing to bring his
        TILA claim against FTL in federal court. This “is a threshold juris-
        dictional question that we review de novo.” Muransky v. Godiva
        Chocolatier, Inc., 979 F.3d 917, 923 (11th Cir. 2020) (en banc).
               “The requisite elements of Article III standing are well estab-
        lished . . . .” Fed. Election Comm’n v. Cruz, 142 S. Ct. 1638, 1646
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        21-13879                Opinion of the Court                         7

        (2022). The plaintiff must show (1) “that he suffered an injury in
        fact that is concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent,” (2)
        that the injury is traceable to—that is, “was likely caused by”—the
        defendant’s legal violation, and (3) “that the injury would likely be
        redressed by judicial relief.” TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 141 S.
        Ct. 2190, 2203 (2021) (citing Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555,
        560–61 (1992)). The party invoking federal jurisdiction bears the
        burden of proving each of these standing elements “with the man-
        ner and degree of evidence required at the successive stages of the
        litigation.” Lujan, 504 U.S. at 561. Thus, “in response to a summary
        judgment motion, ‘the plaintiff . . . must “set forth” by affidavit or
        other evidence specific facts’” showing he was injured, by the de-
        fendant’s legal violation, in a manner amenable to judicial relief.
        Ga. Republican Party v. Secs. & Exch. Comm’n, 888 F.3d 1198,
        1201 (11th Cir. 2018) (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 561).
               We will address each element of standing separately.
                                       A.

                We begin with injury in fact. To satisfy this requirement, “a
        plaintiff must show that he or she suffered ‘an invasion of a legally
        protected interest’ that is ‘concrete and particularized’ and ‘actual
        or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.’” Spokeo, Inc. v.
        Robins, 578 U.S. 330, 339 (2016) (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560).
        “An injury is concrete,” we have said, “if it actually exists”—mean-
        ing, “it is ‘real, and not abstract.’” Hunstein v. Preferred Collection
        & Mgmt. Servs., Inc., 48 F.4th 1236, 1242 (11th Cir. 2022) (en banc)
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        8                        Opinion of the Court                   21-13879

        (quoting Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 340). And “[a]n injury is ‘particular-
        ized’ if it ‘affect[s] the plaintiff in a personal and individual way.’”
        Pedro v. Equifax, Inc., 868 F.3d 1275, 1279 (11th Cir. 2017) (second
        alteration in original) (quoting Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 339).
               Walters identified several concrete, particularized harms in
        this case. He testified in his deposition that (1) he was forced to
        spend time disputing his debt; (2) his credit took a hit, preventing
        him from making other purchases or refinancing his home; (3) he
        spent money faxing documents to his attorney; and (4) he felt anx-
        ious, exploited, embarrassed, and worthless.
               Our precedent recognizes each of these harms as a concrete
        injury in fact. We have held that such injuries include not only
        “straightforward economic injuries,” like lost money, but also
        “more nebulous” ones, Tsao v. Captiva MVP Rest. Partners, LLC,
        986 F.3d 1332, 1338 (11th Cir. 2021), like wasted time, missed credit
        opportunities, and emotional distress. See, e.g., Losch v. Nationstar
        Mortg. LLC, 995 F.3d 937, 943 (11th Cir. 2021) (“[T]here is no ques-
        tion that wasted time is a concrete harm . . . .”); Pinson v. JPMor-
        gan Chase Bank, Nat’l Ass’n, 942 F.3d 1200, 1207 (11th Cir. 2019)
        (reduced credit score and “lost credit opportunities” are concrete
        economic harms). And a plaintiff like Walters, who suffers these
        concrete harms himself, necessarily satisfies the particularity re-
        quirement, too. See Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560 n.1 (stating an injury is
        “particularized” if it “affect[s] the plaintiff in a personal and individ-
        ual way”).
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        21-13879                Opinion of the Court                         9

               FTL makes three arguments that Walters did not suffer an
        injury in fact, notwithstanding our precedent.
                First, FTL challenges the sufficiency of Walters’s evidence.
        FTL suggests that, to survive summary judgment on standing,
        Walters needed to submit “documentation” to corroborate his dep-
        osition testimony detailing his injuries. But we have explicitly held
        that a plaintiff’s “self-serving and/or uncorroborated” testimony
        can be enough on its own “to preclude summary judgment.”
        United States v. Stein, 881 F.3d 853, 857–59 (11th Cir. 2018) (en
        banc). Here, Walters testified to matters within his personal
        knowledge. See Fed. R. Evid. 602. Walters’s deposition testimony
        describing his lost time, economic harm, and emotional distress is
        sufficient evidence of those injuries to survive summary judgment.
        See Losch, 995 F.3d at 943 (plaintiff adequately established “con-
        crete injury in the form of emotional distress and time . . . spent”
        through his own deposition testimony and affidavit).
                Second, FTL relies on caselaw involving intangible, statu-
        tory injuries. These authorities establish the “now-familiar admon-
        ition” that a procedural statutory violation, standing alone, does
        not amount to a concrete injury in fact. Muransky, 979 F.3d at 924
        (citation omitted). Instead, a statutory violation gives rise to an in-
        jury in fact only if the violation (1) inflicts some separate concrete
        harm on the plaintiff or (2) creates a material risk of such harm to
        the plaintiff. Id. at 926–27.
               These authorities do not support FTL’s position. They share
        a dispositive feature that is missing here: they each involved a “bare
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        10                      Opinion of the Court                   21-13879

        procedural violation” and no “concrete harm.” Spokeo, 578 U.S. at
        341. None involved a plaintiff who, like Walters, identified con-
        crete harms in addition to a statutory violation. See, e.g., TransUn-
        ion, 141 S. Ct. at 2210 (holding “[t]he mere presence of an inaccu-
        racy in an internal credit file” in violation of federal statute inflicts
        “no concrete harm” unless it is “disclosed to a third party”); Mu-
        ransky, 979 F.3d at 929 (holding unlawfully printing customers’
        credit card numbers on receipts was not “by itself . . . a concrete
        injury”). Walters’s injuries go beyond FTL’s noncompliant disclo-
        sures—he provided evidence of lost time, money, and peace. These
        are garden-variety injuries in fact under Article III.
                Finally, FTL argues (and the district court reasoned) that
        Fast AC’s intervening fraud is relevant to assessing whether Wal-
        ters suffered an injury in fact. We disagree. In answering the ques-
        tion of standing, it is important to separate the element of injury in
        fact from the element of traceability. See Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S.
        737, 753 n.19 (1984) (stressing the “importan[ce]” of “keep[ing] the
        [standing] inquiries separate”), abrogated on other grounds by
        Lexmark Int’l, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., 572 U.S. 118
        (2014). While the former asks whether there has been a concrete
        and particularized harm, the latter looks for “a causal connection
        between the injury . . . and the challenged action of the defendant.”
        Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560 (quotation omitted). Sometimes statutory-
        injury opinions use language that arguably blurs the distinction.
        See, e.g., Muransky, 979 F.3d at 926, 932 (plaintiffs alleging a pro-
        cedural statutory violation satisfy injury in fact by “show[ing] that
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        21-13879                Opinion of the Court                        11

        the statutory violation itself caused a harm,” or that the violation
        “caused . . . a material risk of harm”) (emphasis added); TransUn-
        ion, 141 S. Ct. at 2214 (“An ‘asserted informational injury that
        causes no adverse effects cannot satisfy [the injury-in-fact require-
        ment of] Article III.”) (emphasis added) (quoting Trichell, 964 F.3d
        at 1004). But it would make little sense, and disrupt longstanding
        conceptions of Article III, to conclude that a plaintiff who suffers a
        concrete harm but not because of the defendant’s statutory viola-
        tion, has really suffered no concrete harm at all.
               In any event, we will “heed our own warning to avoid
        ‘overthinking’ the [injury-in-fact] analysis.” Hunstein, 48 F.4th at
        1242 (quoting Muransky, 979 F.3d at 931). We conclude that when
        a plaintiff establishes that he personally suffered an actual, concrete
        harm, as Walters did here, the injury-in-fact analysis is complete.
        Questions about who or what caused the injury in fact are more
        appropriately addressed under the element of traceability.
                                       B.

                Before assessing the complicated question of traceability, we
        will address the simple question of redressability. Redressability re-
        quires the plaintiff to show that his injuries are “likely to be re-
        dressed by a favorable judicial decision.” Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 338
        (citing Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560–61). Walters suffered an injury in fact
        in the form of wasted time, economic harm, and emotional dis-
        tress. “That, it goes without saying, is an injury which the award of
        damages . . . will redress.” Del Valle v. Trivago GMBH, 56 F.4th
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        12                      Opinion of the Court                   21-13879

        1265, 1279 (11th Cir. 2022); see Resnick v. AvMed, Inc., 693 F.3d
        1317, 1324 (11th Cir. 2012) (“Plaintiffs allege a monetary injury and
        an award of compensatory damages would redress that injury.”).
                                        C.

               We end with traceability, which requires “a causal connec-
        tion” between the plaintiff’s injuries and the defendant’s legal vio-
        lation. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560. Although this element presents the
        most difficult question in this appeal, it too is resolved in Walters’s
        favor.
                Crucial here is that Article III standing requires that the
        plaintiff’s injuries be “fairly traceable to the challenged action of the
        defendant, and not the result of the independent action of some
        third party not before the court.” Id. (cleaned up). Because Wal-
        ters’s TILA claim against FTL provides the only basis for federal
        jurisdiction, he must establish that his wasted time, financial harm,
        and emotional distress are traceable to FTL’s alleged TILA viola-
        tion. It will not suffice to show that his injuries are traceable only
        to the independent actions of Fast AC. See DaimlerChrysler Corp.
        v. Cuno, 547 U.S. 332, 352 (2006) (“[A] plaintiff must demonstrate
        standing for each claim he seeks to press.”).
               Walters offers two reasons why his injuries are traceable to
        FTL’s TILA violation, which we address in turn. Because we accept
        one of them, we hold that Walters has standing to pursue his TILA
        claim against FTL.
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        21-13879                Opinion of the Court                          13

                                           1.

               Walters’s first traceability argument is that both Fast AC’s
        concealment of FTL’s loan documents and FTL’s inadequate dis-
        closures in those documents caused Walters’s injuries. We disa-
        gree. We are not at the pleading stage; we are at summary judg-
        ment. And the summary judgment evidence establishes that FTL’s
        allegedly inadequate disclosures in its standard loan documents
        could not have caused Walters to agree to the harmful loan be-
        cause Fast AC’s employee prevented Walters from ever viewing
        those documents.
                To be sure, traceability is not an exacting standard. It is “less
        stringent” than the tort-law concept of “proximate cause,” Cor-
        doba v. DIRECTV, LLC, 942 F.3d 1259, 1271 (11th Cir. 2019),
        meaning the defendant’s challenged conduct need not be “the very
        last step in the chain of causation” for it to be fairly traceable to the
        plaintiff’s injury, Wilding v. DNC Servs. Corp., 941 F.3d 1116, 1126
        (11th Cir. 2019) (quotation omitted). “[E]ven harms that flow indi-
        rectly from the action in question can be . . . ‘fairly traceable’ to
        that action for standing purposes.” Focus on the Fam. v. Pinellas
        Suncoast Transit Auth., 344 F.3d 1263, 1273 (11th Cir. 2003).
                  But the requirement is not toothless. A plaintiff must at least
        demonstrate factual causation between his injuries and the defend-
        ant’s misconduct. See Dep’t of Com. v. New York, 139 S. Ct. 2551,
        2566 (2019) (“Article III requires no more than de facto causality
        . . . .”) (quotations omitted). Accordingly, we have held traceability
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        14                     Opinion of the Court                 21-13879

        to be lacking if the plaintiff “would have been injured in precisely
        the same way” without the defendant’s alleged misconduct. See,
        e.g., Cordoba, 942 F.3d at 1272 (“There’s no remotely plausible
        causal chain linking the failure to maintain an internal do-not-call
        list to the phone calls received by class members who never said to
        Telecel they didn’t want to be called again.”); Swann v. Sec’y, Ga.,
        668 F.3d 1285, 1289 (11th Cir. 2012) (“Swann’s failure to provide
        the address of the jail on his [absentee-ballot] application inde-
        pendently caused his alleged injury[—i.e., not receiving a ballot].
        Swann would not have received a ballot at the jail regardless of the
        application of the [challenged] statute by the officials.”). Thus, un-
        der our precedents, a plaintiff lacks standing to sue over a defend-
        ant’s action “if an independent source would have caused him to
        suffer the same injury.” Swann, 668 F.3d at 1288.
               Here, FTL’s alleged omission of the correct TILA disclo-
        sures in its loan paperwork could not have been a “factual cause”
        of Walters’s decision to take out the loan because Fast AC’s em-
        ployee prevented him from ever seeing that paperwork. There is
        no evidence that Walters relied on disclosures he never received.
        So he cannot seriously argue that his injuries would have been
        avoided if those concealed disclosures had included different infor-
        mation. To the extent Walters’s harm was caused by “an independ-
        ent source”—Fast AC’s employee—there is no dispute that Walters
        would have suffered “precisely the same” harm if FTL had used
        different disclosures in its form paperwork. Cordoba, 942 F.3d at
        1272; Swann, 688 F.3d at 1288–89.
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        21-13879               Opinion of the Court                        15

               Attempting to explain how documents he never read could
        have harmed him, Walters relies on the tort-law concept of multi-
        ple sufficient causes. This doctrine eases the factual causation re-
        quirement in the “rare” occurrence where several “causes inde-
        pendently, but concurrently, produce a result.” Burrage v. United
        States, 571 U.S. 204, 214 (2014). In such a case, tort law treats each
        cause as a factual cause, even though the same injury would have
        occurred absent any one of them. See Restatement (Third) of
        Torts: Phys. & Emot. Harm § 27 (Am. L. Inst. 2010). Article III
        standing, too, “is not defeated merely because the complained of
        injury can fairly be traced to multiple parties.” BBX Cap. v. Fed.
        Deposit Ins. Corp., 956 F.3d 1304, 1312 (11th Cir. 2020) (citation
        omitted).
                But this is not a multiple-sufficient-cause case. To apply a
        multiple-sufficient-causation analysis, “there must have been mul-
        tiple causes of the injury.” In re Hanford Nuclear Rsrv. Litig., 534
        F.3d 986, 1010 (9th Cir. 2008) (citation omitted); see June v. Union
        Carbide Corp., 577 F.3d 1234, 1243 (10th Cir. 2009) (“The use of
        the word sufficient in both Restatements does not mean that either
        of them would impose liability for conduct that is not a but-for
        cause if only the conduct could have caused the injury.”). Although
        Walters’s complaint alleges multiple potential causes of his inju-
        ries, the evidence creates no dispute, sufficient to survive summary
        judgment, that FTL’s disclosure forms are not one of them. The
        summary judgment evidence establishes that Walters accepted
        FTL’s loan because Fast AC’s employee hid the true price from
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        16                      Opinion of the Court                 21-13879

        him. FTL’s allegedly insufficient disclosure forms had nothing to
        do with it.
               Indeed, Walters’s own example of how his multiple-suffi-
        cient-causes test works shows why it fails under these facts. Walters
        posits: “If a person is exposed to multiple toxins, or the same toxin
        multiple times, each source that would be sufficient on its own to
        cause the plaintiff’s injury constitutes a cause of the harm—even if
        the other sources, too, would have been sufficient without it.” But
        Walters was never “exposed” to FTL’s “toxin”—here, its allegedly
        inadequate disclosures. So he cannot trace his injuries to the text of
        those disclosures, even under his own conception of the doctrine.
                                          2.

               In the alternative, Walters advances another traceability the-
        ory, and this one sticks. TILA liability attaches not only to the pro-
        vision of incorrect disclosures, but also to the failure to provide any
        disclosures at all. Walters’s second theory of traceability is directed
        at the latter. According to Walters, even if Fast AC’s misconduct
        (including its concealment of the loan documents) was the sole
        cause of Walters’s injury, that injury is nonetheless traceable to
        FTL because Fast AC was acting as FTL’s agent for the purpose of
        providing the disclosures. In other words, Fast AC’s actions were
        not “independent” of FTL because it took those actions as an agent
        of FTL.
              The district court declined to address this argument, con-
        cluding that Walters did not properly allege this agency theory in
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        21-13879               Opinion of the Court                       17

        his complaint. We disagree. The issue is one of pleading. Although
        we consider all the evidence in the record when addressing “a ‘fac-
        tual challenge’ to standing” at the summary-judgment phase, when
        “making the necessary preliminary determination of what claims
        the plaintiff has actually raised (and therefore, what claims he must
        have standing to raise), we are bound by the contents of the plain-
        tiff’s pleadings, even on summary judgment.” Bochese v. Town of
        Ponce Inlet, 405 F.3d 964, 976 (11th Cir. 2005).
                We believe Walters sufficiently pleaded that Fast AC was
        acting as FTL’s agent when it allegedly signed up Walters for a loan
        without disclosing the loan’s terms. Walters’s complaint alleges
        that “FTL violated TILA because it never clearly and accurately
        disclosed: the finance charge; the amount of the total of payments;
        nor the due dates or payment schedule to” Walters. It alleges that
        Walters agreed to the loan because “Fast AC never gave him the
        statutorily required disclosures.” And it asserts that “FTL con-
        tracted with Fast AC who at all times acted as its agent” and that
        “FTL is vicariously liable for the harms and losses” caused by Fast
        AC’s misconduct by virtue of this agency relationship. These alle-
        gations are more than sufficient to raise a TILA claim based on an
        agency relationship. Cf. Palm Beach Golf Ctr.-Boca, Inc. v. John G.
        Sarris, D.D.S., P.A., 781 F.3d 1245, 1259–61 (11th Cir. 2015) (hold-
        ing federal pleading rules do not “require that a theory of vicarious
        liability be specifically pled in the complaint”) (citation omitted).
              There is no question that, if Fast AC was acting as FTL’s
        agent in failing to provide the TILA-mandated disclosures, then
USCA11 Case: 21-13879      Document: 50-1       Date Filed: 02/06/2023      Page: 18 of 18

        18                      Opinion of the Court                   21-13879

        Walters’s injuries are traceable to FTL. Accordingly, we conclude
        that Walters has standing to assert this agency-based TILA claim
        against FTL.
                We express no opinion, however, on the merits of this
        claim. See Dillard v. Chilton Cnty. Comm’n, 495 F.3d 1324, 1330
        (11th Cir. 2007) (“[S]tanding is a threshold jurisdictional question
        which must be addressed . . . independent of the merits of a party’s
        claims.”) (cleaned up). We do not address whether or under what
        circumstances a creditor may be held liable under TILA for the ac-
        tions of an agent. We also do not address whether there is sufficient
        evidence of an agency relationship between FTL and Fast AC. See
        Callahan v. U.S. Dep’t of Health & Hum. Servs., 939 F.3d 1251,
        1265 (11th Cir. 2019) (“We are wary of diving head-first into claims
        that the district court hasn’t yet considered . . . .”). All we hold here
        is that Article III allows Walters to litigate these questions in federal
        court.
                                        III.

               Accordingly, we REVERSE the district court’s entry of sum-
        mary judgment for FTL and REMAND for additional proceedings
        consistent with this opinion.