Kendra Carrington v. Santander Consumer USA, Inc. ( 2020 )

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MAR 27 2020
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
KENDRA M. CARRINGTON, No. 18-17098
Plaintiff-Appellant, D.C. No.
2:17-cv-00038-KJD-NJK
v.
SANTANDER CONSUMER USA, INC.; MEMORANDUM*
EXPERIAN INFORMATION
SOLUTIONS, INC.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Nevada
Kent J. Dawson, District Judge, Presiding
Submitted March 25, 2020**
Las Vegas, Nevada
Before: W. FLETCHER, BYBEE, and WATFORD, Circuit Judges.
Kendra Carrington alleged that Santander Consumer USA, Inc. (Santander)
violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) by furnishing false information to
Experian Information Solutions, Inc. (Experian). Santander filed a motion to
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
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dismiss, which the district court construed as a motion for summary judgment and
granted. We affirm.
Carrington knew or should have known that Santander furnished false
information to Experian in the fall of 2014, thereby triggering the two-year statute
of limitations as to her FCRA claims against Santander. See 15 U.S.C. §§ 1681s-
2(a)–(b), 1681p(1); Drew v. Equifax Info. Servs., LLC, 690 F.3d 1100, 1109–10
(9th Cir. 2012). On August 29, 2014, Experian inaccurately reported to Carrington
that her account with Santander was open, had a monthly payment of $525, and
had an outstanding balance of $10,355 as of July 31, 2014. That information was
inaccurate because Carrington had fully paid off the loan from Santander in early
August, closing her Santander account. The information reflected Experian’s
investigation of a dispute Carrington had filed in early August, as part of which
Experian asked Santander to verify Carrington’s account details. On September
10, 2014, Carrington sent a letter to Experian stating her belief that the information
in the August report was “inaccurate, incorrect, incomplete and/or invalid.” In
response, Experian told Carrington that it had “already investigated this
information and [Santander] ha[d] verified its accuracy.” Despite having
discovered, or having constructively discovered, by fall 2014 that Santander
furnished false information to Experian, Carrington did not file her claim against
Santander until more than two years later. See Drew, 690 F.3d at 1109.
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Carrington’s fall 2014 communications with Experian belie her claim that
she first learned that Santander reported false information to Experian in July 2016,
when she received an Experian credit report that had the same inaccurate
information as the August report did, but without the “as of July 31, 2014”
qualifier. As described above, Experian informed Carrington in the fall of 2014
that Santander verified the information Carrington believed was inaccurate.
The fact that Carrington filed an additional dispute with Experian in
September 2016 is irrelevant to the timeliness of her FCRA claims against
Santander. Carrington alleged that Santander violated its statutory duty to
investigate disputes and furnish accurate information to credit reporting agencies,
but those duties arise only after a data furnisher like Santander receives a notice of
dispute from a credit reporting agency like Experian. See 15 U.S.C. § 1681s-2(b);
Gorman v. Wolpoff & Abramson, LLP, 584 F.3d 1147, 1154 (9th Cir. 2009). The
record suggests that Experian sent Santander a notice of dispute regarding
Carrington’s account only once, in August 2014. Carrington speculates that
Santander must have again furnished false information to Experian in late 2016—
thereby triggering a new limitations period—simply because a February 2017
Experian credit report states that it was “updated from [Experian’s] processing” of
the dispute Carrington filed regarding her Santander account in September 2016.
But nothing in the record shows that Experian communicated with Santander as
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part of its processing of Carrington’s September 2016 dispute.
AFFIRMED.