In yet another victory for consumers seeking to enforce their rights in bankruptcy court, Judge Leif M. Clark of the Western District of Texas got it right.  In the case of In re Calvillo, Plaintiff sued a Defendant in bankruptcy court alleging, among other things, a violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.  The Defendant made a motion to dismiss, claiming that a Plaintiff cannot make a claim under the Fair Credit Reporting Act in bankruptcy court due to preclusion issues.  To support this position, the Defendant used the case of Walls v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 276 F.3d 502 (9th Cir. 2001).

However, the court found more persuasive the reasoning offered up by Judge Frank Easterbrook, of the Seventh Circuit, who authored a decision of a panel of that circuit which rejected Walls. See Randolph v. IMBS, Inc., 368 F.3d 726 (7th Cir. 2004); see also Turner v. J.V.D.B. & Associates, Inc., 330 F.3d 991 (7th Cir.2003); Hyman v. Tate, 362 F.3d 965 (7th Cir.2004). Said Judge Easterbrook, “When two federal statutes address the same subject in different ways, the right question is whether one implicitly repeals the other – and repeal by implication is a rare bird indeed. It takes either irreconcilable conflict between the statutes or a clearly expressed legislative decision that one replace the other.” Id., at 730, citing Branch v. Smith, 538 U.S. 354, 273 (2003). Judge Easterbrook concluded that neither was to be found in the case of the FDCPA. Similar logic indicates the ruling in that circuit would be the same were the FCRA before the court.