Court Opinion

ID: 9946280
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-29 17:00:40.328752+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:25:38.535947
License: Public Domain

In the
    United States Court of Appeals
                For the Seventh Circuit
                    ____________________

No. 23-1308
GABRIEL BROWN and IVAN BROWN,
                                               Plaintiffs-Appellants,
                                v.

CACH, LLC,
                                                Defendant-Appellee.
                    ____________________

        Appeal from the United States District Court for the
          Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
          No. 20 C 4579 — Robert W. Gettleman, Judge.
                    ____________________

  ARGUED JANUARY 22, 2024 — DECIDED FEBRUARY 29, 2024
               ____________________

   Before EASTERBROOK, ST. EVE, and JACKSON-AKIWUMI,
Circuit Judges.
    EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Bank of America sold to
CACH a consumer debt account that was in arrears. The Bank
declined to make any representations about the accuracy of
the $5,246.21 balance that it had calculated. CACH attempted
to collect the debt without announcing that the Bank had not
veriﬁed the balance.
2                                                   No. 23-1308

    Gabriel Brown (the asserted debtor) and her brother Ivan
Brown (who pretended to be Gabriel during one phone call)
then sued CACH under 15 U.S.C. §1692e, part of the Fair Debt
Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). The Browns did not allege
that they had paid a penny to CACH, suﬀered a lower credit
rating, or incurred any other concrete loss. Instead Gabriel
ﬁled an aﬃdavit stating that she had “interrupted my self-
employment” to “mull over my memories” and “scour my
records” about the asserted debt. The case proceeded to sum-
mary judgment. But when the judge requested supplemental
briefs with details, such as what Gabriel’s self-employment
entailed and how any interruption led to a loss of income or
other tangible detriment, she declined to provide additional
information. The judge then dismissed the complaint for lack
of standing to sue. 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 29299 (N.D. Ill. Jan.
17, 2023).
    Injury is essential to standing, even when a statute entitles
the plaintiﬀ to collect damages without quantifying loss. See,
e.g., TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 141 S. Ct. 2190 (2022); Spokeo,
Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330 (2016); Baysal v. Midvale Indemnity
Co., 78 F.4th 976 (7th Cir. 2023).
    It is easy to see how debt-collection eﬀorts could reduce a
person’s self-employment income. Imagine a writer who tries
to work from 8 am to noon every day, gets interrupted by a
dunning phone call at 8:05, loses her train of thought (and
thus a day’s work), and cannot ﬁnish the manuscript on the
original schedule, which reduces or delays her royalties. (A
delay in receiving income is a form of loss. See Dieﬀenbach v.
Barnes & Noble, Inc., 887 F.3d 826, 828 (7th Cir. 2018).) But it
isn’t enough to imagine how injury could occur; a plaintiﬀ
challenged to produce evidence of injury at the summary-
No. 23-1308                                                    3

judgment stage must do so. See, e.g., Lujan v. Defenders of Wild-
life, 504 U.S. 555, 561 (1991).
    Summary judgment is the “put up or shut up” time in lit-
igation. Schacht v. Wisconsin Department of Corrections, 175 F.3d
497, 504 (7th Cir. 1999). Gabriel was asked for details and re-
fused to provide any. We do not know on this record that Ga-
briel ever has obtained income from her self-employment, let
alone how CACH’s failure to say that the Bank had not war-
ranted the accuracy of its calculation aﬀected self-employ-
ment income.
    The Browns assert that decisions such as Billups v. I.C. Sys-
tem, Inc., 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 153002 (N.D. Ill. August 25,
2022), establish that the interruption of self-employment al-
ways shows injury in fact. None of these decisions comes from
a court of appeals. To the extent the unqualiﬁed proposition
has support in any judicial decision, it lacks support from the
Supreme Court or the Seventh Circuit. To repeat: Interruption
of self-employment could cause a loss, but whether it did cause
a loss must be established by evidence. Plaintiﬀs, who de-
clined an opportunity to produce such evidence, cannot carry
on with this litigation.
                                                      AFFIRMED