FCRA plaintiff fails to hold TransUnion accountable
- Peter Schneider
- Oct 20
- 6 min read
The Fair Credit Reporting Act does not require that the furnishers of credit information and the credit reporting agencies themselves report anything, but it does require that the information they do report be accurate.
To that end the FCRA allows consumers to dispute inaccurate information. But what duty do the credit reporting agencies have to to decide if the reported information is accurate or not? According to this federal judge, not a whole lot. The case is Silver v. Top Line Reporting Inc., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 205169, 2025 LX 492390.
According to the opinion, Ms. Silver rented and then vacated an apartment with a rodent infestation, and she
notified the landlord that she was vacating the apartment since it was no longer habitable, and told the landlord to use her security deposit to cover her June 2024 rent. She also told the landlord that if no one else moved in by July 2024, she would pay the July rent.
The landlord came back at her for a $6,437 "concession" charge although this wasn't in the lease, and then came up with a $2,857, apparently abandoning the "concession" charge.
But plaintiff did not owe the landlord anything at that time, as she had already paid her May and June rent, plus her rent for the first two weeks of July.
The landlord hired Top Line to collect the [not owed debt] who, instead of asking Ms. Silver directly, pressured her by reporting to TransUnion that Ms. Silver was 60 days late on $3,820. Ms. Silver responded by sending TransUnion a detailed written dispute with supporting documentation.
In that letter, she explained that, in her view, she had paid rent in full for May 2024 and that her landlord applied her security deposit to cover June 2024 rent. Plaintiff also pointed out inconsistencies between what her landlord told her she owed, what Top Line told her she owed, and what Trans Union ultimately reported. In particular, Top Line's July 3 ledger said plaintiff owed $10,307; the landlord's July 31 email said plaintiff owed $2,857; and Trans Union's credit report said she owed $3,820. Plaintiff noted that Top Line's $10,307 debt as of July 3 could not be reconciled with the landlord's $2,857 debt as of July 31 since she had not made any payments between those dates. Plaintiff attached a copy of the July 31 email from her landlord, a copy of the July 3 Top Line ledger, and a copy of her lease agreement — the latter making no mention of a concession charge. Plaintiff received Trans Union's results of its reinvestigation on December 19, 2024, which stated that Top Line had verified the accuracy of Trans Union's reporting. The Trans Union credit report showed that the Top Line account was 60 days past due in December 2024 but did not contain payment history information for July through November 2024. Plaintiff called Trans Union on December 23, 2024 to understand what Trans Union did to reinvestigate her dispute and to dispute the Top Line debt again. Trans Union told her that it did not do any type of investigation [this is pretty standard - the letter and evidence you send to a credit reporting agency isn't because they are going to do something about it, but as part of building a case for court when they don't] and instead reported what Top Line told it to report. Trans Union sent plaintiff a letter that day stating that it was refusing to conduct another investigation of her dispute and would not notify Top Line that she was again disputing the account.
Ms. Silver did something very smart - after she disputed the inaccurate information and it was verified, she applied for credit and was denied. This gives her damages and standing in court.
she claims that Goldman Sachs reviewed her Trans Union credit report and, in denying her credit application, pointed to a "serious delinquency" and "amount past due on accounts"; the Top Line account was the only negative item on plaintiff's Trans Union credit report. [Getting a credit denial letter or a letter specifically identifying how the offer of credit isn't as good as it would have been but for a specific event on your credit is part of building a strong FCRA case]
Ms. Silver went after Top Line, but also TransUnion alleges it violated the FCRA by failing to conduct reasonable reinvestigations of plaintiff's disputes associated with the Top Line account and failing to delete or modify the disputed information after failing to verify its completeness and accuracy. Unfortunately the court said that TransUnion had little duty to actually investigate anything and dismissed them.
There was clearly a factual dispute between plaintiff and her landlord. Plaintiff claims that she paid rent to her landlord for May 2024, June 2024, and the first two weeks of July 2024, and that she owed no debt to her landlord as a result. However, when plaintiff communicated this to Trans Union in her December 2024 dispute, she offered only her word in support. [I don't know, but an affidavit might have been treated by the court as actual evidence] She did not attach, for example, a letter from Top Line or her landlord stating that she never owed the debt or had been released from her obligation to pay the debt. The only way Trans Union could have objectively and readily verified the inaccuracy was to insert itself into plaintiff's dispute with her landlord. [This is where either Ms. Silver could have made a better argument, or she did and the court ignored it. An argument to raise is that TransUnion wasn't obligated to report Ms. Silver's credit information, and anything that seemed this wildly inconsistent from all the different sources and versions probably should not have been reported at all] Contrary to plaintiff's argument, simply reviewing the lease (because it did not contain a reference to a concession charge), the landlord's emails (because they set forth conflicting amounts of liability to explain the basis for the alleged debt [which supports the argument for DON'T REPORT IT AT ALL]), and payment records (which, plaintiff contends, showed "full payment") would not have been enough. Trans Union would have had to, at the very least, compare plaintiff's payments from her bank account with the terms of the lease, or, more conclusively, reached out to the landlord and secured a release on plaintiff's behalf. Either is asking too much of a consumer reporting agency. Trans Union is neither an accounting firm nor a law firm, and it did not have to undertake that kind of intricate analysis. Plaintiff admits that even though her landlord appeared to have abandoned the $6,437 concession charge, it was still seeking $2,857, making the justifiability of the concession charge irrelevant. And even if the landlord could not explain the basis for the alleged debt, the landlord had asserted that there was one; in turn, plaintiff's version of "full payment" necessarily differed from that of her landlord. In sum, plaintiff's dispute pointed to different positions between herself, her landlord, Top Line, and Trans Union, and identified no readily available document explicitly contradicting the existence of her debt. Although it may be true that plaintiff owed no money to her landlord, Trans Union could not have ascertained that fact with any certainty from plaintiff's dispute package — nor was it required to do so under the FCRA.
This case illustrates the high bar to hold the credit reporting agencies accountable, but it sounds like she has Top Line dead to rights. If they can pay a judgment.
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