The U.S. Supreme Court put new limits on consumer lawsuits, backing
The justices, voting 5-4, said most of the 8,000 people in the class action case lacked the legal right to sue.
Of those class members who were wrongly flagged by the credit reporting agency as potential matches to individuals on a terrorist watch-list, only about a quarter had their reports sent to third parties.
The bulk of the class members suffered no concrete harm because the reputational risk of the false alerts never materialized, Justice
“A letter that is not sent does not harm anyone, no matter how insulting the letter is,” Kavanaugh wrote. “So too here.”
The lawsuit was first brought under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which requires the reporting agencies like TransUnion to ensure “maximum possible accuracy” in their consumer reports.
The credit agency incorrectly flagged people as potential matches, based on their names alone, to individuals listed as national security threats by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Justice
“TransUnion’s misconduct here is exactly the sort of thing that has long merited legal redress,” Thomas said.
In a separate dissent, Justice
TransUnion was trading up less than 1% at 11:03 a.m. in New York
The case is TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 20-297.
(Updates with opinion, dissents starting in fifth paragraph.)
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