The Supreme Court declined yesterday to review a decision exposing debt collectors to liability within bankruptcies over their actions, leaving intact an Eleventh Circuit decision extending Fair Debt Collection Practices Act protections to a debtor, Law360 reported yesterday. Stanley Crawford had filed the adversary proceeding against LVNV Funding LLC, which had pursued and received a claim in Crawford's 2008 bankruptcy; LVNV had bought the debt from another company after it was charged off in 1999. Lower courts dismissed Crawford's complaint, but the Eleventh Circuit said in July that LVNV's claim on the money was too old under the FDCPA. The Supreme Court included no reasoning for its decision, simply including it in a list of denials of certiorari it released yesterday. The Eleventh Circuit said that unsophisticated consumers wouldn't anticipate or be able to defend effectively against the filing of a time-barred claim and that circuit precedent combined with the broad language of the act made it applicable in this case.
