United States District Court, D. Arizona
ORDER
HONORABLE SUSAN M. BRNOVICH, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE.
Pending
before the Court is Defendant Phoenix Title Loans LLC's
Motion to Dismiss. (Doc. 28, “Mot.”) Plaintiff
Jennifer Littlejohn responded, (Doc. 35,
“Resp.”), but Defendant did not reply. Neither
party requested oral argument and the Court elects to resolve
this Motion without it. See LRCiv 7.2(f). Defendant
moves to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
(Mot. at 7 (“[Defendant] respectfully requests that
Plaintiff's complaint . . . be dismissed pursuant to
Article III of the United States Constitution.”.)
Having considered the pleadings and applicable law and
accepting the allegations in the complaint as true, the Court
grants the Motion as explained below.
I.
BACKGROUND
Plaintiff
obtained an automobile title loan from Defendant for
unidentified personal, family or household purposes around
April 24, 2018. (Doc. 1, “Compl.” ¶¶
12-13, 16-17.) Attached to her loan was a Truth in Lending
Act disclosure statement (“disclosure
statement”). (Id. ¶¶ 20-22.) The
disclosure statement listed the loan's terms at 156% APR,
a $118.30 finance charge, a $700.00 total amount charged, and
$791.00 in total payments. (Id. ¶¶ 21-22,
25.) At issue here, the disclosure statement “failed to
disclose the number, amount, and due dates or period of
payments scheduled to repay the total of payments.”
(Id. ¶¶ 26.) The disclosure statement also
incorrectly identified the “‘total of
payments' as $791.00, when the actual ‘total of
payments' is $818.30.” (Id. ¶¶
30.)
Plaintiff
now brings this lawsuit “seek[ing] to recover monetary
damages [including statutory and actual damages,
attorneys' fees, and pre- and post-judgment interest] for
Defendant's violation of the TILA.” (Id.
¶¶ 2, 26(b)-(e), 30(b)-(e).) No actual damages or
source of damages is alleged other than procedural
violations. The Complaint specifically alleges Defendant
violated the TILA's statutory disclosure requirements as
outlined in 15 U.S.C. §1638(a)(5) & (6) for omitting
a payment schedule and incorrectly identifying the total
payments. (Id. ¶¶ 23-30.) Defendant now
moves to dismiss for lack of Article III standing for failing
to identify a concrete injury. (See Mot. at 1.)
II.
LEGAL STANDARD
Under
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1), a party may move to
dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. See
Carijano v. Occidental Petroleum Corp., 643 F.3d 1216,
1227 (9th Cir. 2011) (“Article III standing is a
species of subject matter jurisdiction.” Id.).
Article III of the United States Constitution “endows
the federal courts with the ‘judicial Power of the
United States.'” Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins,
136 S.Ct. 1540, 1547 (2016) (citing U.S. Const. Art. III,
§ 1). “The judicial Power of the United
States” only extends to “Cases” and
“Controversies.” U.S. Const. Art. III,
§§ 1-2. Undoubtedly, “[n]o principal is more
fundamental to the judiciary's proper role in our system
of government than the constitutional limitation of
federal-court jurisdiction to actual cases or
controversies.” Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811
(1997). “Standing to sue is a doctrine rooted in the
traditional understanding of a case or controversy . . .
[that] developed in our case law to ensure that federal
courts do not exceed their authority as it has been
traditionally understood.” Spokeo, 136 S.Ct.
at 1547 (citing Raines, 521 U.S. at 820). Plaintiff
bears the responsibility of establishing standing, Lujan
v. Defs. Of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61 (1992), and
must do so for each claim brought as well as the type of
relief sought. Summers v. Earth Island
Inst., 555 U.S. 488, 493 (2009); see also
DaimlerChrysler Corp., 547 U.S. at 352. To do this,
“[P]laintiff must have (1) suffered an injury in fact,
(2) that is fairly traceable to the challenged conduct of the
defendant, and (3) that is likely to be redressed by a
favorable judicial decision. Id. “[A]t the
pleading stage, the plaintiff must ‘clearly . . .
allege facts demonstrating' each element.”
Spokeo, 136 S.Ct. at 1547.
III.
DISCUSSION
A.
Injury-in-Fact
A
plaintiff does not “automatically satisf[y] the
injury-in-fact requirement whenever a statute grants a person
a statutory right and purports to authorize that person to
sue to vindicate that right.” Id. at
1549.[1] “In other words, even when a statute
has allegedly been violated, Article III requires such
violation to have caused some real-as opposed to purely
legal-harm to the plaintiff.” Robins, 867 F.3d
1108, 1112 (9th Cir. 2017). Thus, in evaluating harm, courts
look to “(1) whether the statutory provisions at issue
were established to protect [plaintiff's] concrete
interests (as opposed to purely procedural rights), and if
so, (2) whether the specific procedural violations alleged in
this case actually harm, or present a material risk of harm
to, such interests.” Id. at 1113.
Sometimes,
a defendant's “alleged procedural violation [of a
statute] can by itself manifest concrete injury where
Congress conferred the procedural right to protect a
plaintiff's concrete interests and where the procedural
violation presents ‘a risk of real harm' to the
concrete interest.” Strubel v. Comenity Bank,
842 F.3d 181, 190 (2nd Cir. 2016) (citing Spokeo,
136 S.Ct. at 1549). As the Supreme Court put it:
“[defendant's] violation of a procedural right
granted by statute [to plaintiff] can be sufficient in some
circumstances to constitute injury in fact . . . [and] a
plaintiff in such a case need not allege any
additional harm beyond the one Congress has
identified.” Spokeo, 136 S.Ct. at 1549
(emphasis in original). The Supreme Court specifically
identified these circumstances. Id. at 1549-50
(citing Fed. Election Comm'n v. Akins, 524 U.S.
11, 20-25 (involving voters' inability to access
information that Congress made public); Pub. Citizen v.
Dep't of Justice, 491 U.S. 440, 449 (1989)
(involving inability of two advocacy groups to obtain
information subject to disclosure under Federal Advisory
Committee Act). “But even where Congress has accorded
procedural rights to protect a concrete interest, a plaintiff
may fail to demonstrate concrete injury where violation of
the procedure at issue presents no material risk of harm to
that underlying interest.” Strubel, 842 F.3d
at 190 (citing Spokeo, 136 S.Ct. at 1549). We begin
with identifying the interests that the TILA's procedural
rights protect, which is not disputed between the parties,
before addressing whether a violation of those procedural
rights harmed or presented a material risk of harm
Plaintiff.[2]
1.
The TILA's Protected Interests
Both
parties agree that the TILA generally protects consumers'
informed use of credit in an effort to strengthen the
economy. (Mot. at 4 (“Congress enacted TILA . . . to
promote the informed use of credit through fair and
transparent lending practices (citing 15 U.S.C. §
1601(a)); Resp. at 4 (“TILA was ‘designed to
protect consumers from inaccurate and unfair credit
practices, and ‘to assure a meaningful disclosure of
credit terms so that the consumer will be able to compare
more readily the various credit terms available to him and
avoid the uninformed use of credit'” (citing
Fairley v. Turan-Foley Imports, Inc., 65 F.3d 475,
479 (5th Cir. 1995) (quoting 15 U.S.C. § 1601(a)).
In
Congress's own words, it passed the TILA as a consumer
protection act to “assure a meaningful disclosure of
credit terms so that the consumer will be able to compare
more readily the various credit terms available to him and
avoid the uninformed use of credit, and to protect the
consumer against inaccurate and unfair credit billing and
credit card practices.” 15 U.S.C. § 1601(a). In a
more general sense, the TILA was enacted to promote
“economic stabilization” through “the
informed use of credit[, ] . . . [which] results from an
awareness ...