Catherine Evon v. Law Offices of Sidney Mickell

I. BACKGROUND

Evon incurred a debt, which was assigned to Mickell for collection. As part of Mickell’s collection efforts, a debt col- lector contacted Evon at home on several occasions. During a phone call between Evon and one of Mickell’s debt collec- tors, Evon asked that she not be contacted at work. Nonethe- EVON v. LAW OFFICES OF MICKELL 8475 less, either intentionally or by mistake, Mickell sent a debt collection letter to Evon’s place of employment. The mailing address read:

Catherine Evon PERSONAL AND

CONFIDENTIAL

C/O Homeq Servicing 4837 Watt Ave #100 North Highlands CA, 95660

One line below the mailing address read:

Creditor: CACH, LLC Our File Number: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Original Creditor: Maryland National Bank Original Account Number: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Balance: $xxxx.xx

The letter was placed in a window-style envelope and it is unclear whether a viewer could see this debt-related informa- tion.

The return address on the envelope read:

Law office of Sidney H. Mickell 5050 Palo Verde St., Ste. 113 Montclair, CA 91763

The letter was opened and read by various individuals, including people in the legal department, before it found its way to Evon. Id.…

dissenting:

Debt collectors have never been popular. Nonetheless they perform a necessary societal function. The Federal Reserve estimates that in the United States today unpaid consumer debts amount to over two and one-half trillion dollars. http://www. federalreserve.gov/realeases/g19/Current/. If debts are not paid, credit will dry up. To keep our debt-prone society functioning, we must respect the rights of the debt collector.

The statute at issue here is precise. The text is set out in the majority opinion. After setting out the text, the majority ignores it to create a statute more to its taste.

The text itself forbids “a debt collector” to “communicate, in connection with the collection of any debt, with any person other than a consumer, his attorney, a consumer reporting agency if otherwise permitted by law, the creditor, the attorney of the creditor, or the attorney of the debt collector.” The critical verb is “communicate.”

The majority supposes that a debt collection letter addressed to a debtor at his place of employment is a communication made to an indefinite number of persons in the employer’s business: Mickell “knew or could reasonably anticipate that a letter…

Both parties in this action appeal various rulings of the district court’s summary judgment, class certification, attorney’s fees, and sanctions orders. The principal issue is whether a debt collector may send collection notices addressed to the debtor, in “care of’ the debtor’s employer. We conclude that the answer is “no.”

Defendant Law Offices of Sidney Mickell sent a debt collection letter addressed directly to Plaintiff Catherine Evon in “care of’ her employer. Evon filed a class action lawsuit alleging that Mickell’s act of sending letters “care of’ the class members’ employers violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act’s prohibition on communication with third parties. 15 U.S.C. § 1692c(b). She further alleged that the contents of the letter violated the Act’s prohibition against “false, deceptive, or misleading representation^.” § 1692e. Because Congress enacted the FDCPA to protect debtors from abusive debt collection practices, id., and because we have consistently interpreted the statute liberally to achieve that objective, Mickell’s act of sending “care of’ letters constitutes a per se violation of the FDCPA. We therefore reverse the district court’s…