This past Tuesday, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Midland Funding, LLC v. Johnson, No. 16-348 (cert. granted Oct. 11, 2016), to review the Eleventh Circuit’s holding that filing a stale proof of claim in a consumer bankruptcy violates the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. For more details on the Eleventh Circuit’s opinion, 823 F.3d 1334 (11th Cir. 2016), see our previous blog post here.
The Supreme Court granted cert. with respect to the following specific questions:
1. Whether the filing of an accurate proof of claim for an unextinguished time-barred debt in a bankruptcy proceeding violates the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
2. Whether the Bankruptcy Code, which governs the filing of proofs of claim in bankruptcy, precludes the application of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to the filing of an accurate proof of claim for an unextinguished time-barred debt.
The Eleventh Circuit’s holding deepened a circuit split on the first issue and created a split on the second, and—in an unusual turn of events—both parties urged the Supreme Court to take the case.
We’ll be monitoring the case as it proceeds. Additional coverage and copies of the parties’ briefs are available from SCOTUSblog.
Posted by Lee Peifer.