Spokeo Class Action Lawsuit Over Publishing False Information Revived

Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.

Spokeo class action lawsuit says the “people search engine” violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act by publishing false information about consumers online.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday revived a class action lawsuit that accuses the people-based search engine Spokeo.com of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act by publishing false information about consumers.

For a plaintiff to seek a legal remedy, courts must find that they have suffered an injury in fact, which most satisfy by alleging a loss of money due to false advertising or some other cause of action. That was the basis for a January 2011 ruling by U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II granting Spokeo’s motion to dismiss the class action lawsuit, originally filed in July 2010 by plaintiff Thomas Robins. On Feb. 4, however, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision, granting Robins appeal.

In this case, the FCRA — a law designed by Congress to protect the accuracy of credit reports and other documentation that can affect the ability to obtain loans, get jobs and more for many Americans — allows for people to seek damages of between $100 and $1,000 for each violation of the statute. Robins alleged that because these provisions are enforceable through a private cause of action, they create statutory rights that he has standing to vindicate in court.

Spokeo, a company that scrapes the Internet for identifying information such as marital status, estimates of credit information and other data was the target of Robins, who alleged that the facts linked to him were incorrect. Initially, Judge Wright II of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California agreed that there was a plausible case for the man to pursue before then reversing himself.

At first, Wright had believed that “marketing of inaccurate consumer reporting information” was a sufficient injury in fact, but later decided that there was no economic injury and as such Robins did not have Article III standing even with the tenets of the FCRA. The Ninth Circuit, however, agreed with Robins and his class action lawsuit regarding his statutory right.

They decided that while “Spokeo contends … that Robins cannot sue under the FCRA without showing actual harm … the statutory cause of action does not require a showing of actual harm when a plaintiff sues for willful violations.” As Robins alleged that the company was bound by accuracy requirements for credit reporting agencies and those supplying similar information, he can continue his case.

Robins is seeking to represent a class of people who had inaccurate information published on the Spokeo website, regardless of whether or not they were looking to get jobs, obtain loans or other uses of information from credit reporting agencies. The complaint also seeks injunctive relief from the publishing of inaccurate information scraped and collated from other sources.

Robins is represented by class action attorneys Steven Woodrow, Jay Edelson and Rafey S. Balabanian of Edelson PC.

The Spokeo FCRA Class Action Lawsuit is Thomas Robins v. Spokeo Inc., Case No. 11-cv-56843, U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

UPDATE: Spokeo is appealing the revival of this class action lawsuit to the Supreme Court, in a petition for writ of certiorari filed May 1, 2014.

UPDATE 2: On May 16, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Robins v. Spokeo that plaintiffs must prove both “concrete and particularized” injury when pursuing litigation under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) instead of focusing on mere technical violations.