Pintos v Pacific Creditors Association, 565 F.3d 1106 (9^th Cir. 2009). Andrew J Ogilvie represented the consumer in an important precedent setting case involving the question of whether someone to whom the consumer has not asked for credit may access the consumer’s credit reports. In the Pintos case, the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals held that a towing company did not have the right to access the consumer’s credit report because Mrs. Pintos never asked the towing company to extend credit to her. Instead, the towing company had towed her car because the police told it to do so. When Mrs. Pintos refused to pay the towing company’s extortionate demand for towing and storage charges, the towing company’s collection agency pulled her credit report to see if she was worth suing.

That is not allowed under the FCRA. In order to have a permissible purpose to pull a consumer’s credit report, the company that seeks the report must have had a credit transaction involving the consumer that was initiated by the consumer. Debt collection agencies and the credit bureaus have been very upset by the decision in Pintos and claim that it makes it much harder for them to collect debts like taxes and liens.

Tow Company Cases. Mark F. Anderson has represented a number of consumers who have been harassed by debt collector Rickenbacker Group for tow bills when the fact was that the consumers was not responsible for the tow bill. In some cases, Rickenbacker’s target consumer had sold the vehicle to someone else before it was towed. In one case, Rickenbacker came after someone with an identical name of the true owner of the vehicle. Rickenbacker damages these consumers by reporting to Experian and sometimes Trans Union that the innocent consumer has a bad debt in the form of a towing and storage bill.

Stolen Identity Cases: Andrew Ogilvie has handled several cases for consumers who were the victims of identity theft. In a typical identity theft case, the victim does not know that his identity has been stolen for many months. Then they often learn of the theft of their identity when they receive a phone call or letter from a collection agency that is demanding payment on a credit card or loan that the consumer has never opened. The consumer often stumbles around trying to figure out how to solve this problem: how to stop the collection agency from pursuing them, how to get the credit reporting agencies to correct their credit reports, and how to regain their good credit so they can buy a car or finance a house. We have assisted a number of identity theft victims to send the proper letters to the proper corporations and, if those corporations have not responded appropriately, we have sued them for those consumers. Again, we handle these cases on a contingency fee basis.