Some CA's are responding to Validation of Debt requests with a simple "Yep, you owe it" note, signed by someone whose actual first-hand knowledge of the account is unknown, citing a Court of Appeals case from the 4th District, Chaudhry v Gallerizzo; 174 F3d 394 as their precedent. I believe they do so at very grave risk for the following reason: The Chaudhry case revolves around a Construction Loan taken out by Chaudhry that went into default, and the creditor attempted to collect the debt. That Chaudhry used FDCPA as a stall is unquestionable when reading the opinions of the case. The specific parts of the case that CA's use in citing Chaudhry are the Court's interpretation of "what is sufficient Validation under FDCPA?" Keep in mind that Chaudhry has been used as precedent in many cases, including the criminal trial of John Walker Lindh (the American Taliban). Chaudhry demanded "Validation" of two items in particular - the appraisal fee that would be incident to the bank's foreclosure on his loan and the attorneys' fees incidental to its' collection. Chaudhry demanded specific documents as validation, among which are the invoices for the Appraisal and the attorney's timeslips notes. The Court refused his demand for two reasons, both of which are particular to the Chaudhry case and the Chaudhry case alone and therefore are irrelevant to the cases we are dealing with. One ground for refusal was that the charge that Chaudhry demanded validation on had not yet been incurred. This applied to both the appriasal (which had not yet been done or contracted out for, just intimated in a collection letter that he would be charged for it) and the attorneys' fees - which also were largely unknown, since they were an ongoing expense whose final amount was unknown at the time. The second ground for refusing his FDCPA Validation demand was the nature of one of the expenses - the attorneys' fees and a a diary of what items were being billed for (it was Chaudhry's allegation he was being billed for legal work unrelated to the collection of his debt). Nevertheless, in several ways that information is privileged and not subject to any disclosure. When we request Validation, we face neither of these situations - all amounts the CA is asking for are (in their mind) fully due and owing and therefore are not hypothetical or unknown; and are not privileged. In Chaudhry the court did not say what was acceptable and proper validation - all the Court said was that unknown or incomplete or hypothetical amounts that are not final in the creditor's mind are not subject to Validation, nor are items that are legally privileged subject to disclosure as part of Validation (yet.... but the Court was silent about whether the incomplete, hypothetical or unknown amounts would be subject to Validation when these amounts were known). This is a far cry from the court saying "Just tell the debtor 'Yep, you owe it'".
