Summary:
In this Western District case, the pro se plaintiff, Brittney Moseley, brought what has become a fairly common species of Fair Credit Reporting Act litigation — alleging that a lender “pulled” her credit report without authorization and, in the process, violated both the FCRA and North Carolina’s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
The Court did not buy it.
Moseley applied online to open a membership account with Latino Community Credit Union. As part of that process, she electronically signed an application that — in clear, unambiguous language — authorized the credit union to verify her identity and obtain a credit report if necessary. The account rules repeated the same thing: eligibility for membership includes consent to check your credit and banking history.
That’s the ballgame.
Because the record showed:
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A real credit report existed,
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The credit union accessed it, and
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It had a permissible purpose — i.e., the consumer’s written authorization and a legitimate transaction initiated by the consumer —
the Court concluded that there was no FCRA violation, and therefore no UDTPA violation either. The Court converted the motion to dismiss into one for summary judgment (with the parties’ consent) and entered judgment for the credit union. It also denied the plaintiff’s attempt to file yet another amended complaint, finding that amendment would be futile because the documents already in the record doomed the theory of liability.
As the Court put it, obtaining a credit report “in connection with an application to open a financial account with the consent of the consumer” simply isn’t unfair, deceptive, or unlawful.
Commentary:
Cases like this are an important reminder — for both lawyers and consumers — about the real-world consequences of online agreements. The credit unions and banks have learned (sometimes the hard way) to put conspicuous authorization language directly above the signature line, and courts are increasingly unwilling to ignore that language when consumers later claim surprise.
This is also another example where adding more allegations to a complaint cannot salvage a claim once the documentary record contradicts the narrative. Rule 15 is liberal, but not magical: if the authorization is right there in black and white, no amount of “re-pleading” can make it disappear.
For consumer advocates, the takeaway isn’t that FCRA claims are frivolous — many are not — but that these cases live or die on the paper trail. Where creditors fabricate applications, misuse credit pulls, or go fishing without a legitimate purpose, liability remains very real.
But when the consumer clicks “I agree,” courts will hold them to it.
To read a copy of the transcript, please see:
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