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Calvin Brim paid his Dell computer bill. Dell misapplied the payment. The unpaid balance ended up in a chain of debt sales and eventually landed at Midland Credit Management, one of the largest debt buyers in the country, owned by Encore Capital Group. Midland reported the debt to the credit bureaus as past-due, then sued Mr. Brim in court. He disputed the debt. He kept disputing the debt. He sent disputes to the bureaus, who forwarded them through e-OSCAR. Midland answered every dispute with the same one-word response: verified.
A jury in the Northern District of Alabama returned a verdict in Mr. Brim's favor of $100,000 in compensatory damages plus $623,180 in punitive damages, a total of $723,180. Brim v. Midland Credit Mgmt., Inc., 795 F. Supp. 2d 1255 (N.D. Ala. 2011). The willfulness finding under 15 U.S.C. § 1681n was upheld.
Two facts from the trial explain how the case got there.
First, the volume. Midland was receiving roughly 8,000 consumer disputes every week. That volume was the consequence of Midland's business model: it buys consumer debt portfolios in bulk for pennies on the dollar, Mr. Brim's debt was reportedly purchased for about five cents on the dollar. When you buy debt at that price, you do not buy the original creditor's records, the consumer's payment history, or the signed application. You buy a spreadsheet.
Second, the process. Of those 8,000 disputes a week, the evidence at trial showed that approximately 95% were handled by a computer that compared the data the credit bureau forwarded with the data Midland already had in its system. If the two matched, and they almost always did, because both sets of data started from the same spreadsheet, the computer answered "verified" and pushed the response back through e-OSCAR.
The closing argument theme was three words: "They don't care." The jury believed it.
But Brim is not the largest FCRA verdict, and it is not an outlier. The federal courts have been producing FCRA verdicts at or above $500,000 for two decades. The pattern across them is remarkably consistent.
Individual Fcra Verdicts At Or Above $500,000
Cortez v. Trans Union, LLC, 617 F.3d 688 (3d Cir. 2010), $50,000 compensatory + $750,000 punitive = $800,000 jury verdict (punitives later modified on appeal). Sandra Cortez was trying to buy a car when her credit report came back showing her as a Specially Designated National on the U.S. Treasury Department's OFAC list, a sanctions list typically reserved for suspected terrorists and drug traffickers. TransUnion had matched her file to a different person with a similar name using a loose-matching algorithm. She disputed it. TransUnion did not fix it. She lost the car loan and nearly lost an apartment. The Third Circuit affirmed the willfulness finding and the framework for every mixed-file case that has come since.
Williams v. First Advantage LNS Screening Solutions, Inc., 947 F.3d 735 (11th Cir. 2020) (modifying jury verdict), $250,000 compensatory + $3.3 million punitive = $3.55 million jury verdict against an employment-screening consumer reporting agency that reported the wrong person's criminal record to a prospective employer. The Eleventh Circuit later reduced the punitive component on constitutional grounds, but the verdict illustrates the exposure that specialty CRAs, background screeners, tenant screeners, and the like, face when their procedures fail.
Bach v. First Union National Bank, 486 F.3d 150 (6th Cir. 2007) (reviewing prior jury verdict), $400,000 compensatory + $2.6 million punitive against a national bank that continued reporting a consumer's account after she reported it as identity theft. The Sixth Circuit reduced the punitives on constitutional grounds, but the verdict was an early signal that the FCRA reached the largest furnishers, not just the bureaus.
Bickley v. Dish Network, LLC, 751 F.3d 724 (6th Cir. 2014) (FCRA permissible-purpose case), Jury awarded a combined compensatory and punitive verdict exceeding $1.2 million for a willful pull of the consumer's credit report without a permissible purpose. The case stands for the principle that 15 U.S.C. § 1681b is not optional: a creditor or other user who pulls a consumer report outside the FCRA's enumerated permissible purposes faces willful- violation exposure.
Daugherty v. Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC, 701 F. App'x 246 (4th Cir. 2017), Jury verdict (later modified) of approximately $500,000 compensatory and $2.5 million punitive against a mortgage servicer that processed each successive consumer dispute in isolation, without consulting the prior dispute correspondence. The Fourth Circuit held that a jury could find recklessness in that conduct.
Ramirez v. TransUnion LLC, No. 3:12-cv-00632 (N.D. Cal. 2017 jury verdict; later reversed in part on standing grounds by TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U.S. 413 (2021)), More than $60 million in combined statutory and punitive damages for a class of approximately 8,000 consumers whose TransUnion files matched names on the OFAC list through the same loose-matching algorithm at issue in Cortez. The Supreme Court later held that absent class members who had not had the inaccurate reports actually published lacked Article III standing. The verdict itself was not based on any change in the substantive FCRA standard.
Miller v. Equifax Information Services, LLC (D. Or. 2013), $180,000 compensatory + $18.4 million punitive = $18.58 million jury verdict. Julie Miller of Marion County, Oregon was confused with a different Julie Miller through Equifax's loose matching algorithm, wrong Social Security number, wrong date of birth, collection accounts that were not hers. She contacted Equifax nine times over roughly two years to correct the file; the inaccuracies persisted. The jury found Equifax's conduct willful. The trial court later reduced the punitive damages to approximately $1.62 million on Due Process grounds, leaving a total award of roughly $1.8 million, itself still well above $500,000. Miller stands as the headline mixed-file verdict and as a cautionary tale about CRA reinvestigation failure.
Ward v. National Credit Systems, Inc. (D. Colo., Civ. Action 21-cv-02597, jury verdict June 2024), $500,000 in emotional distress damages. Robbin Ward sued NCS, a debt collector and furnisher, after disputing a debt he alleged arose from identity theft committed by a family member. NCS continued to report the debt and the jury found its investigation unreasonable. Judge Wang denied every post-trial motion the defendant filed: judgment notwithstanding the verdict, new trial, remittitur, and an attempt to offset the award under the one-satisfaction rule against prior settlements with other defendants. The case is on appeal to the Tenth Circuit. Ward is one of the most recent significant FCRA verdicts in the country and a reminder that identity-theft-related FCRA cases continue to draw seven-figure attention from federal juries.
Notable Class-Action Resolutions
Class FCRA cases have produced the largest aggregate FCRA recoveries on record. The CFPB and FTC do not litigate the private cause of action; private consumer plaintiffs and their counsel do.
Gibbs v. Rees / Think Finance / TCV, $50 million class settlement (E.D. Va.) in a tribal-lending case involving FCRA, RICO, and state usury claims. Consumer Litigation Associates was lead or co-lead counsel.
Domonoske v. Bank of America, $10 million class settlement (W.D. Va.) on FCRA notice violations under the risk-based-pricing rules. Consumer Litigation Associates was counsel.
Hargrett v. Amazon.com, $5 million class settlement (M.D. Fla.) covering approximately 454,000 background-screened applicants affected by FCRA disclosure-and-authorization violations. Consumer Litigation Associates was counsel.
Berry v. LexisNexis Risk & Information Analytics Group, Multi- million-dollar class settlement (E.D. Va.) in which LexisNexis was required to comply with the FCRA as to a major specialty reporting product. Consumer Litigation Associates was counsel.
Sanders v. Global Radar Acquisition, $3.6 million class settlement in a background-check FCRA case. Consumer Litigation Associates was counsel.
Norman v. Trans Union, LLC (February 2025), $23 million class settlement for more than 485,000 consumers whose disputed inquiries TransUnion failed to remove. One of the largest inquiry-removal class settlements in FCRA history.
In re Equifax Inc. 2017 Customer Data Security Breach Litigation (N.D. Ga.) produced a $425 million-plus settlement fund, the largest data-breach settlement in U.S. history at the time, combining a class action, FTC enforcement, and CFPB action. The class action component rested on FCRA accuracy and safeguarding duties.
What These Cases Share
Read the verdicts together and a pattern emerges. The FCRA tends to produce six- and seven-figure verdicts when the consumer can show some combination of the following:
1. The same defendant has been told the data was wrong more than once.
2. The "investigation", by the credit reporting agency, the furnisher, or both, consisted of matching incoming data to the defendant's own existing records, with no independent inquiry into whether the existing records were right.
3. The defendant operated a system the defendant knew (or had reason to know) would produce errors at scale. Brim's 8,000 disputes a week, Midland's 95% computer-only handling rate, Ocwen's per-dispute siloing, TransUnion's OFAC-list partial- match algorithm; these were not accidents. They were business decisions.
4. The wrong information stayed on the consumer's report for months or years after notice, long enough for the harm to compound through credit denials, insurance refusals, employment rejections, and the kind of cumulative emotional injury that juries do not have trouble believing.
5. The defendant has the financial capacity to pay. Punitive damages turn in part on the defendant's resources. The Brim jury was permitted to consider Encore Capital's stockholders' equity. Juries are not embarrassed to do so.
6. The plaintiff documented everything. Certified-mail receipts. Reinvestigation results. Adverse-action notices. Time logs. Contemporaneous notes. Every one of the cases above had a paper trail.
What This Means For You
If you have disputed inaccurate information on your credit report, particularly inaccuracies that resulted from identity theft, a mixed file, a charged-off account that was actually paid, or a time-barred debt, and the credit bureaus or the furnisher have refused to fix the file after one or more disputes, the kind of conduct documented in these cases is exactly the kind of conduct the FCRA was written to make accountable.
You do not have to be denied a mortgage to have damages. You do not have to prove the defendant intended to harm you. Under Safeco Insurance Co. v. Burr, 551 U.S. 47 (2007), reckless disregard of the FCRA's accuracy and reinvestigation duties suffices. The defendants who lost the cases above did not set out to ruin anyone's life. They built systems that did it anyway, and they refused to fix the systems when consumers told them what was wrong. The juries did the rest.
If you have been disputing an inaccuracy, the credit bureau or the furnisher has refused to fix it, and you have kept your records, call us at (757) 930-3660 or request a free case review. The FCRA shifts attorney's fees and costs to the defendant when we win, meaning there is no out-of-pocket cost to you for finding out whether you have a claim.
Common Questions
What is the largest FCRA verdict?
Individual FCRA verdicts have reached and exceeded half a million dollars, and class resolutions have run far higher. Several of the individual awards discussed above were later modified on appeal or by post trial motion, which is why the disclaimer below matters and why no figure here should be read as a prediction.
Do I need to have been denied credit to have a case?
No. Denial is one kind of harm and it is not the only one. Worse terms, a higher rate, a reduced limit, time spent, and emotional distress are all recognised, and the FCRA also provides for statutory damages where a violation is willful.
What do these cases have in common?
The defendant was told more than once. The investigation consisted of matching data against the furnisher's own data. The wrong information stayed on the file for months or years after notice. And the consumer kept documentation.
How long do I have to bring an FCRA claim?
There is a limitations period and it is shorter than people expect, running from discovery of the violation with an outer limit from the date of the violation itself. Do not let a documented dispute sit for years before getting advice.
What is my case worth?
Nobody can answer that from the outside, and anyone who does is guessing. It turns on the conduct, the notice, the duration, the harm, the defendant, and the documentation. The cases above are examples from the public record, not benchmarks.
What should I be doing now?
Keep every dispute, every certified mail receipt, every result letter, every method of verification description, and dated reports from before and after each round. The documentation is what separates the cases that go somewhere from the ones that do not.
Note on Case Results
PAST RESULTS DO NOT GUARANTEE, WARRANT, OR PREDICT FUTURE OUTCOMES.
Every case is different. The verdicts, judgments, and settlements described above are factual examples drawn from the public record. Many were modified on appeal, by post-trial motions, by settlement, or, as in Ramirez v. TransUnion, by subsequent decisions of the Supreme Court on standing rather than on the merits of the FCRA claim itself. Some defendants paid the full headline amount; others paid less; others negotiated confidential settlements after verdict. The outcome of any future case depends on the specific facts, the applicable law in the relevant federal circuit, the defendant involved, the strength of the documentary record, and many other variables that cannot be predicted from prior results.
This page is for general informational purposes only. It is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship between you and Consumer Litigation Associates, P.C. or any of its attorneys. If you have a specific legal question, you should consult a lawyer about your particular circumstances.
Leonard A. Bennett, VSB #37523, responsible for content. Consumer Litigation Associates, P.C., Newport News, Virginia. This page is attorney advertising under the rules of the Virginia State Bar.