Is enforcement of a security interest (e.g. a foreclosure) "debt collection" under the FDCPA?

Yes, says the Sixth Circuit, in Glazer v. Chase Home Finance, issued yesterday. This is good news for FDCPA plaintiffs, who have had to contend for years with a district court consensus that the enforcement of a security interest is not subject to most of the provisions of the Act. An odd type of split is developing on this issue: most district courts are getting it wrong, whereas most courts of appeals are getting it right. Usually, one expects the districts to follow the circuits, but the narrow view of debt collection continues to prevail at the district court level. (The circuits also have the better reading of the statute, in my view, which makes it all the more strange that the split seems to have persisted for so many years.)

Comments

[Peth]

If you have no money and must go into debt, you have no money to pay further claims. Duh, whats up with our laws?

[Richard Davet]

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, and acts like a duck , the players in "the GSE Business Model" have called it a "servicer".

It gets goofier as the borrower has always thought that they were dealing with their "lender".

It is what a prosecutor would call a "theft by deception scheme" albeit of a dimmension never before seen with the first borrowers and then Taxpayers as victims.