Financial Services 2017 Year-End Report

Industry Developments

Henson v. Santander Consumer USA Inc., No. --- U.S. ---, 137 S.Ct. 1718 (2017)

In 2017, consumers initiated nearly 10,000 lawsuits alleging violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). See WebRecon LLC, Stats for November 2017: Bizarro Stats, www.webrecon.com (2017) (reporting that consumers initiated 9,072 FDCPA lawsuits through Nov.

30, 2017). The prevalence of FDCPA lawsuits may decline, however, following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Henson v. Santander Consumer USA Inc.

In June, the Supreme Court decided the issue of who qualifies as a "debt collector" under the FDCPA. In his first authored decision as a member of the high court, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a unanimous opinion holding that an entity may collect debts that it purchased on its own behalf without automatically triggering the FDCPA.