$500K FCRA verdict

[keepmine]

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stor...reporting+case+

 

 

 

Turner's lawyer, David Antognoli of Edwardsville, asked jurors to punish the bank by "charging" it for each of the 100 to 120 times it had reported the repossession to the nation's three major credit bureaus. Antognoli said Thursday that Turner is still trying to get the mistake erased from her record.

[Gingerly]

Wow! Thanks for the link.

[BizCredit]

nice!!!

 

in case the linky dies:

 

Woman gets $500,000 in credit-reporting case

By Trisha L. Howard

Of the Post-Dispatch

04/08/2004

 

 

A Madison woman whose car was wrongfully repossessed by her bank, ruining her credit history, won't have to worry about credit when she buys another car.

 

She should have the cash, as a Madison County awarded her $500,000 in damages Wednesday over the botched repossession.

 

Lorraine Turner of Madison reported her 1993 Chevrolet Geo Prism stolen on a Saturday night in March 2000, only to find out from police that the car had been repossessed. The following Monday, Turner said, she went to Firstar Bank with the car's title, which the bank had mailed to her just weeks earlier.

 

She got her car back later that day, minus the laptop computer and digital camera that had been in the back seat.

 

Turner, who recruits Madison High School dropouts back to the classroom, never got her missing property back. The repo company was ordered by a judge to pay Turner $50,000.

 

But the real rub, Turner said, was that the bank later reported to credit agencies that it had repossessed her car - even though the repossession was a mistake.

 

The repossession still casts a shadow on her credit report. Last year, she said, she was turned down for a car loan at a dealership in Wood River, an experience she described as "embarrassing."

 

"You just wouldn't believe what this has done for me, just knowing how justice was served," Turner said of Wednesday's verdict. "It means a lot more than money. It lets you know you are somebody in this society."

 

Firstar changed its name to U.S. Bank after merging with U.S. Bancorp three years ago. A spokesman for the corporation declined to comment Thursday on the verdict.

 

Turner's lawyer, David Antognoli of Edwardsville, asked jurors to punish the bank by "charging" it for each of the 100 to 120 times it had reported the repossession to the nation's three major credit bureaus. Antognoli said Thursday that Turner is still trying to get the mistake erased from her record.

 

Phillip Stassi, a Roxana resident who served as foreman of the jury, said that the issue of Turner's ruined credit record struck close to home for jurors. The jury wanted to give Turner enough money, even after lawyers' fees, that she could buy whatever she wanted without having to depend on credit, Stassi said.

 

And because the jury couldn't order the bank to straighten out Turner's credit report, jurors decided instead to punish the company with a large verdict, Stassi said.

 

"When you're dealing with a company worth $300 billion, if you don't give them something to look at, they won't pay attention," Stassi said. "We put ourselves in her position. It was just like they really didn't take time to care."

 

But the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that such thinking no longer applies in civil suits, said Keith Beyler, a professor at Southern Illinois University School of Law in Carbondale.

 

The Supreme Court ruled recently that punitive damages against a defendant should bear some relationship to actual damages and that single-digit multipliers are more appropriate than massive verdicts meant to punish a defendant, Beyler said.

 

"Illinois law took into account the size of a defendant, his wealth, to determine how high the damages had to be to punish him," Beyler said. "Where the law now is, that argument is not legally valid anymore. If the person has been hit with an award up to 10 times the amount of any harm that has been caused, that should be enough for anyone, big or little, to think carefully before ever doing the same thing again."

 

The Madison County Courthouse has already attracted national attention for the rising number of class-action and asbestos cases filed there every year. Critics of the courthouse charge that local judges and juries favor plaintiffs in civil cases, leading to what they say are excessive verdicts against corporate defendants.

 

In fact, this week's verdict marks the second time in two years that a Madison County jury has slammed Firstar Bank with a significant punitive award.

 

In September 2002, a jury awarded an Alton woman $283,000 after the bank nearly emptied her checking account at the request of the woman's employer, which claimed to have overpaid her. Punitive damages made up $250,000 of the award.

 

Turner said that she probably won't decide how to spend the money until she has a check in hand. But she suspects she will invest a chunk of the cash in a new vehicle to replace her mother's car, which she has driven for the past several years.

 

"I had to go without because of this on my credit report," she said. "I see this as a blessing. The Lord works in mysterious ways."

 

Reporter Trisha L. Howard

E-mail: thoward@post-dispatch.com

Phone: 618-659-3640

[CALITO]

that's wa i'm talkin' about'.....

[BizCredit]

anyone from here live round there??

 

sounds like a good consumer lawyer to me

[mountainmommy]

bumping for day crowd...good story

[ajile81]

I actually live in Wood River, and this is the first I'd heard about this. I'd say there was something screwy though with this entire situation. In fact, Madison County is NOTORIOUS for a high amount of repos, particularly as the economic climate (and job market) has dropped off so significantly over the past couple of years. Glad to see that someone managed to get payback for bad treatment by a bank though.

[VibrantEcho]

After reading this board for several months, seems like getting the repo off should have been just a matter of sending out a couple validation letters and maybe an intent to sue. What the HECK was she doing that allowed the bank to report the repo "100 to 120 times to each of the three major credit bureaus"?

 

Fiona

[tolstoy]

I grew up in the area. Madison County is very blue collar and the entire area is fairly industrial (steel mills, etc.). A big reason for these big awards is just that the locals like to extract as much as they can from big business and are extremely sympathetic to the underdog.

 

It wouldn't surprise me if they would award someone $1,000,000 for a bank erroneously charging a $29 fee.

 

It's not like most other places down there were you select a jury and there is economic diversity and a cross sectional societal split. Chances are the entire jury was made up people that are out to screw the man. I'm not saying it's a bad thing (my family still lives down there), but there is definitely a reason that so many class actions are filed in that county.

 

It's basically an area where the south starts and also has the distinction of being in the rust belt. It's a great dynamic if you are a plaintiffs attorney, though.

[jazzyjewel]

As we all know well enough on this board , when your credit is bad it affects your whole life and standard of living. Its sucks but its the way it is .

And you can't put a price on that. So for all the time that this negative reporting affected her, she deserves every penny!

[tolstoy]

I agree that messed up credit is a terrible thing. She doesn't sound culpable at all, but it sounds like this has been going on for 10 years and could have been easily cleared up a long time ago.

 

At what point is it their problem and at what point were there steps available to her that she didn't take? I think that's what an appellate judge will be looking at. There is such a thing as mitigation of damages and it doesn't sound like she did much in the meantime to alleviate any of the damages.

[begoodorelse]

Great story, and what's more, the law prof may be wrong: Large punitive damages awards can sometimes survive on appeal.

 

In State Farm Mutual Insurance v. Campbell, the Court said "we instructed courts reviewing punitive damages to consider three guideposts: (1) the degree of reprehensibility of the defendant’s misconduct; (2) the disparity between the actual or potential harm suffered by the plaintiff and the punitive damages award; and (3) the difference between the punitive damages awarded by the jury and the civil penalties authorized or imposed in comparable cases."

 

Pardon the long boring excerpt here, but sometimes you gotta get into the details:

 

"We decline again to impose a bright-line ratio which a punitive damages award cannot exceed. Our jurisprudence and the principles it has now established demonstrate, however, that, in practice, few awards exceeding a single-digit ratio between punitive and compensatory damages, to a significant degree, will satisfy due process. In Haslip, in upholding a punitive damages award, we concluded that an award of more than four times the amount of compensatory damages might be close to the line of constitutional impropriety. 499 U.S., at 23—24. We cited that 4-to-1 ratio again in Gore. 517 U.S., at 581. The Court further referenced a long legislative history, dating back over 700 years and going forward to today, providing for sanctions of double, treble, or quadruple damages to deter and punish. Id., at 581, and n. 33. While these ratios are not binding, they are instructive. They demonstrate what should be obvious: Single-digit multipliers are more likely to comport with due process, while still achieving the State’s goals of deterrence and retribution, than awards with ratios in range of 500 to 1, id., at 582, or, in this case, of 145 to 1."

 

So it's arguable, in view of the bank's willful and perpetual boneheadedness, that only this much would be enough to "punish and deter" since the jury, and the court in a private action (as opposed to the AG or FTC), can't slap an injunction on them. Still, my instinct is, it'll get marked down or settled on appeal for noticeably less, dangit.