Francis Mailman Soumilas, P.C., recently filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Texas man against Equifax and Transworld Systems in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleging that Transworld Systems violated the U.S. Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”), and that both companies violated the U.S. Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”).
According to the complaint in the lawsuit, both Equifax and Transworld Systems have been reporting derogatory and inaccurate statements and information regarding our client and his background to third parties. The alleged inaccurate information at issue in this lawsuit pertains to a Transworld collections account with a balance for a debt originally owed to Quest Diagnostics.
Specifically, Equifax and Transworld Systems are allegedly falsely reporting that an account with Quest Diagnostics for which a balance is owed belongs to our client. However, that account does not belong to our client; it belongs to another consumer and therefore should not have been reported by either company on our client’s credit report.
This allegedly inaccurate information negatively reflects upon our client’s credit repayment history, his financial responsibility as a debtor, and his creditworthiness.
Even though our client has disputed the allegedly inaccurate information with Equifax from March 2022 through the present, including by following Equifax’s established procedures for disputing consumer credit information, Equifax has indicated to our client that it plans to continue publishing this inaccurate information, and has done so.
“The FDCPA and FCRA were designed to eliminate the kind of conduct that we allege Equifax and Transworld Systems engaged in here regarding our client’s credit information and reporting,” said Siobhàn E. McGreal, one of the lawyers at Francis Mailman Soumilas, P.C., who filed the lawsuit. “It is bad enough when a credit reporting agency like Equifax reports false credit information that could damage a consumer’s ability to obtain credit. But when that information concerns a false debt that a company like Transworld Systems should have corrected on its own or after our client disputed it, the ramifications for our client become much worse and could be long-lasting.”
According to the complaint, despite our client’s efforts to correct the inaccurate information Equifax is publishing about him, Equifax has (i) never contacted him to follow up on or verify his disputes, (ii) never contacted third parties that would have information concerning his disputes, (iii) never forwarded any relevant information concerning his disputes, and (iv) never requested or obtained credit applications from Transworld Systems providing the inaccurate information. The complaint alleges this misconduct violated the FCRA.
Transworld Systems, as the company furnishing the inaccurate information, allegedly has also failed to conduct timely and reasonable investigations of our client’s disputes after being contacted by Equifax concerning our client’s disputes, failed to mark the account as disputed, and has willfully continued to report such inaccurate information to various credit reporting agencies.
The complaint alleges Transworld Systems violated the FDCPA by, among other things, falsely representing the amount and character of a debt and failing to communicate that a disputed debt is disputed. The complaint alleges the company violated the FCRA by deliberately, willfully, intentionally, recklessly, and negligently repeatedly (i) failing to perform reasonable reinvestigations of our client’s dispute as required by the FCRA, (ii) failing to remove the inaccurate information on his credit report, (iii) failing to note the disputed status of the inaccurate information, and (iv) continuing to report the derogatory inaccurate information about our client.
As a result of Equifax and Transworld Systems’ alleged unlawful conduct, our client has suffered actual damages in the form of lost credit opportunities, credit defamation, and emotional distress, including anxiety, frustration, embarrassment, and humiliation.
The relief our client is seeking in the lawsuit includes, among other things, actual damages, statutory damages, and punitive damages.
If your consumer report or employment background check contains inaccurate information about you, including credit records or debts that do not belong to you, you may be able to recover damages against the credit reporting agency that created it. If you do so, the credit reporting agency may also be required to pay your attorneys’ fees and costs.
Contact us online or call 215-735-8600 to schedule a free case review with a representative of Francis Mailman Soumilas, P.C. Located in Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, we serve clients nationwide.