Mark D. Mailman of Francis Mailman Soumilas. Courtesy photo
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) allows consumers to dispute the validity or accuracy of information in their credit reports and gives them three options for doing so. A consumer may file a “direct” dispute with the entity that furnished the allegedly false or inaccurate information to a consumer reporting agency (CRA). Or, that consumer can file an “indirect” dispute with the CRA, which can pass the dispute onto the furnisher for further investigation. As a third option, a consumer can file both direct and indirect disputes.
Recently, in Ingram v. Experian Information Solutions, No. 21-2430 (3d Cir. Oct. 2, 2023), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit tackled the question of whether furnishers, when faced with a potentially frivolous indirect dispute, have the same discretion under the FCRA to decline to investigate that kind of dispute as they have to decline to investigate a potentially frivolous direct dispute. The court, in a straightforward statutory interpretation opinion, held that the FCRA did not give furnishers that same discretion because the statute’s language did not provide it.
