Robert Sustrik v. Equifax Information Services ( 2020 )

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS JUL 22 2020
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
ROBERT SUSTRIK; SHARON BARNUM, No. 19-15791
Plaintiffs-Appellants, D.C. No.
2:16-cv-02866-RFB-NJK
v.
EQUIFAX INFORMATION SERVICES, MEMORANDUM*
LLC,
Defendant-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Nevada
Richard F. Boulware II, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted July 13, 2020
San Francisco, California
Before: IKUTA and HURWITZ, Circuit Judges, and TAGLE,** District Judge.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) imposes requirements on credit
reporting agencies, and provides a private cause of action for willful or negligent
violations of those requirements. See 15 U.S.C. §§ 1681n, 1681o. Two FCRA
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The Honorable Hilda G. Tagle, United States District Judge for the
Southern District of Texas, sitting by designation.
provisions, 15 U.S.C. § 1681i(a)(3)(B), (a)(6)(A), require a consumer be notified of
the outcome of a reinvestigation triggered by the consumer’s dispute about
information in a credit report.
In this action, Robert Sustrik and Sharon Barnum allege that Equifax
Information Services, LLC, violated the FCRA by failing to provide notice of the
results of reinvestigations of items on their credit reports. Equifax had reinvestigated
each disputed item and found no inaccuracies. Plaintiffs did not challenge the
outcome of the reinvestigations, but only Equifax’s failure to provide notice of the
results. The district court granted summary judgment to Equifax, finding Plaintiffs
had failed to “satisfy the prima facie element of inaccuracy as required by the Ninth
Circuit for the FCRA claims arising under Section 1681i.” We have jurisdiction
over Plaintiffs’ appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and affirm.
Although the text of the FCRA does not condition the duty to reinvestigate on
inaccuracy in a credit report, we held in Dennis v. BEH–1, LLC that “section 1681i
creates no duty to reinvestigate where ‘the credit report accurately reflect[s] the
status of the information contained in the public records.’” 520 F.3d 1066, 1069 (9th
Cir. 2008) (alteration in original) (quoting Williams v. Colonial Bank, 826 F. Supp.
415, 418 (M.D. Ala. 1993)). We subsequently confirmed that “the FCRA’s
reinvestigation provision, 15 U.S.C. § 1681i, . . . require[s] that an actual inaccuracy
exist for a plaintiff to state a claim.” Carvalho v. Equifax Info. Servs., LLC, 629 F.3d
2
876, 890 (9th Cir. 2010). Under our precedent, the district court therefore did not
err in holding that this suit failed because there was no genuine dispute that the
information in the Plaintiffs’ files was accurate.
AFFIRMED.
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