Quinones v. Chase Bank USA, N.A. et al

Filing 3

MEMORANDUM Order is issued sua sponte to address some matters that appear problematic from the Complaint's allegations and attached exhibits. Signed by the Honorable Milton I. Shadur on 7/28/2016:Mailed notice(clw, )

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION

JOEL QUINONES,
Plaintiff,
v.
CHASE BANK, USA, N.A., EXPERIAN
INFORMATION SOLUTIONS, INC., and
TRANS UNION LLC,
Defendants.

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Case No. 16 C 7443

MEMORANDUM ORDER
Joel Quinones ("Quinones") has filed this action against Chase Bank, USA, N.A.
("Chase") and two of the three principal credit reporting agencies in this country -- Experian
Information Solutions, Inc. ("Experian") and Trans Union LLC ("Trans Union") -- for their
asserted violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (the "Act"). This memorandum order is
issued sua sponte to address some matters that appear problematic from the Complaint's
allegations and attached exhibits.
Chase's involvement with Quinones (and vice versa) stemmed solely from two credit
cards that Chase issued to him (Complaint ¶ 10). When Quinones turned out to be a bad risk (he
was delinquent to the tune of more than $10,700 on one card and later to the tune of over $8,700
on the other card), Quinones cancelled each of the accounts voluntarily and Chase later issued
the IRS' required Forms 1099-C that reflected the discharge of each outstanding indebtedness.
That entirely truthful handling by Chase did not of course constitute a violation of the
Act. Instead Complaint ¶ 14 alleges "however, Plaintiff's Chase accounts continue to be

negatively reported," a charge that is based on what Experian and Trans Union did with the
information accurately provided by Chase. Accordingly this memorandum order will turn to that
handling, which is relevant to the posture of both Chase and the credit reporting agencies as
targeted defendants.
In that respect Complaint Ex. C is a portion of a credit report assertedly requested by
Quinones and dated April 15, 2016 (see Complaint ¶ 15) -- a snippet that does not identify which
credit reporting agency was involved but contains information listed as "CHASE CARD" and
states "CHARGE OFF" as to each of the two accounts. That uncertainty as to source is not
cleared up by the April 16 letter from Quinones' present lawyer to each of the three defendants.
Nor is that information provided by what is now Complaint Ex. E (which appears to be the entire
credit report from which those two snippets were taken), for so much has been blacked out of
that form that the Exhibit does not identify the issuing agency.
More importantly, although the charged-off amounts that Ex. E reports as to the two
Chase cards are somewhat higher than the figures shown in the two Chase Forms 1099-C, the
entire amount is accurately shown as a "CHARGE OFF" in each instance. It is true that the two
columns that come before the "CHARGE OFF" confirmation are headed "BALANCE" and
"PAST DUE," with identical figures in each of those two columns, but the only sensible reading
of that report is that "PAST DUE" reflects the status of the account when it was charged off and
is not an amount that is still past due -- if the latter were the case, what would the "CHARGE
OFF" entry in the final column headed "STATUS" refer to?
Quinones and his counsel don't seem to comprehend that the function of a credit
reporting agency is to report facts that bear on a person's credit. If, as they would have it,
Quinones' credit report were simply to reflect that the credit card accounts had been closed at

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Quinones' request, without showing that thousands of dollars were past due on each account
when they were closed and that the past due amount has been charged off, that would have
conveyed a totally misleading picture to anyone approached by Quinones to provide a line of
credit.
Indeed, as to Chase, Quinones seeks to fault it under the Act for not having undertaken
the task of changing the Experian and Trans Union format for reporting the type of information
referred to in the Complaint and recounted here. Is it really Chase's responsibility to call for the
credit reporting agencies (whom it does not control) to change their format for reporting truthful
information as to a debtor such as Quinones? All of this may perhaps call for a different reaction
under the relevant caselaw in cases arising under the Act, but this Court is sufficiently troubled
by the presentation in the Quinones Complaint to require his counsel to provide citations to
relevant caselaw promptly before this action may move forward.

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Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge
Date: July 28, 2016

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