An Oregon woman was awarded an $18.6 million from a federal jury in a highly unusual, and possibly precedent setting, civil lawsuit. Julie Miller of Marion County was granted the mammoth settlement after struggling for two years to get the credit bureau Equifax Information Services to correct major mistakes on her credit report. Miller was awarded $18.4 million in punitive damages and $180,000 in compensatory damages, though experts believe the landmark decision will be appealed.
Miller stated in court that she contacted Equifax at least eight times between 2009 and 2011, pleading with them to fix incorrect and false information. The errors included erroneous accounts, an incorrect social security number, wrong birthday, and phantom collections attempts from creditors that did not exist. Her lawsuit purported that Equifax, based out of Atlanta, failed to make reasonable attempts to fix their mistakes, causing her legal harm.
"There was damage to her reputation, a breach of her privacy,” said Justin Baxter, the attorney who worked on the case alongside with his father, attorney Michael Baxter. “She lost opportunity to seek credit. She has a brother who is disabled and who can't get credit on his own, and she wasn't able to help him."
Miller first discovered something was wrong when she applied for credit but was denied from Huybbard Bank in 2009 and then Key Bank in 2010. She first contacted Equifax and found out something was very wrong with her credit report in 2010, and tried to clear up the issue with their customer service representatives, but ran into a wall of frustrations, transferred to outsourced call centers in the Philippines or repeatedly told they needed further information before they could proceed with her dispute. She’d found similar mistakes with the other credit bureaus, but they corrected those inaccuracies expeditiously. After 8 attempts and two years of fruitless effort, Miller sought legal council and filed a lawsuit in Federal Court.
A study by the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year reports that of 1,001 consumers who reviewed 2,968 of their credit reports, 21% of them were found to have errors. It’s recommended that consumers regularly check their credit reports for errors, and file a dispute with the bureau or enlist a reputable credit reporting firm to help.
So what do you think about this decision? Is it a frivolous attempt to cash in, or just compensation for damages? Should credit bureaus be held accountable and liable for the information they report, based on issues of privacy and the impact credit reports have on our lives? We’d love to hear what you think, so please leave a comment or email us at contact@BlueWaterCredit.com.
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