Tanethia Holden v. Holiday Inn Club Vacations Incorporated

98 F.4th 1359
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
DecidedApril 24, 2024
Docket22-11014
StatusPublished
Cited by26 cases

This text of 98 F.4th 1359 (Tanethia Holden v. Holiday Inn Club Vacations Incorporated) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Tanethia Holden v. Holiday Inn Club Vacations Incorporated, 98 F.4th 1359 (11th Cir. 2024).

Opinion

USCA11 Case: 22-11014 Document: 69-1 Date Filed: 04/24/2024 Page: 1 of 18

[PUBLISH] In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 22-11014 ____________________

TANETHIA HOLDEN, an individual, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus HOLIDAY INN CLUB VACATIONS INCORPORATED, a foreign for-profit corporation, f.k.a. Orange Lake Country Club, Inc.,

Defendant-Appellee,

EXPERIAN INFORMATION SOLUTIONS, INC. a foreign for-profit corporation, USCA11 Case: 22-11014 Document: 69-1 Date Filed: 04/24/2024 Page: 2 of 18

2 Opinion of the Court 22-11014

Defendant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida D.C. Docket No. 6:19-cv-02373-CEM-EJK ____________________

No. 22-11734 ____________________

MARK S. MAYER, an individual, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus HOLIDAY INN CLUB VACATIONS INCORPORATED, a foreign for-profit corporation f.k.a. Orange Lake Country Club, Inc.,

Defendant-Appellee, USCA11 Case: 22-11014 Document: 69-1 Date Filed: 04/24/2024 Page: 3 of 18

22-11014 Opinion of the Court 3

EXPERIAN INFORMATION SOLUTIONS, INC., a foreign for-profit corporation,

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida D.C. Docket No. 6:20-cv-02283-GAP-EJK ____________________

Before BRANCH, LUCK, and TJOFLAT, Circuit Judges. TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge: Our country’s credit reporting system relies on accurate re- porting both by consumer reporting agencies and entities, known as furnishers, that provide information to those agencies about con- sumers’ debts. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), 15 U.S.C. § 1681s-2, furnishers must conduct a reasonable investi- gation when a consumer challenges the accuracy of the infor- mation. In this consolidated appeal, we face the question of what amounts to an actionable inaccuracy under the FCRA. Two con- sumers, Tanethia Holden and Mark Mayer, entered into purchase agreements for timeshares with Holiday Inn Club Vacations Inc. Holden and Mayer stopped making monthly payments and USCA11 Case: 22-11014 Document: 69-1 Date Filed: 04/24/2024 Page: 4 of 18

4 Opinion of the Court 22-11014

considered their agreements to be canceled. Holiday disagreed and reported their debts to Experian—a consumer reporting agency. After unsuccessful attempts to resolve their disputes with Holiday, 1 Holden and Mayer filed individual FCRA actions alleging that Hol- iday violated § 1681s-2 by inaccurately reporting that they owed debts and that Holiday failed to reasonably investigate their dis- putes. The District Courts granted summary judgment for Holiday in both cases, finding the alleged inaccuracies were legal disputes and therefore not actionable under § 1681s-2. After careful review, and with the benefit of oral argument, we affirm—though for a different reason. Whether the alleged in- accuracy is factual or legal is beside the point. Instead, what mat- ters is whether the alleged inaccuracy was objectively and readily verifiable. Here it was not. Thus, Mayer and Holden had no ac- tionable FCRA claims. I. Background Holiday is a timeshare company. Its customers pay to use one or more of its vacation properties for a few weeks per year. Holiday’s customers also agree to pay homeowner association dues that cover maintenance and property taxes. Like many of Holiday’s customers, Holden and Mayer financed their timeshares

1 Holden and Mayer also claimed that Experian violated the FCRA by failing

to ensure that their credit reports were accurate. Those claims are not at issue because Holden and Mayer settled and dismissed their claims against Ex- perian. USCA11 Case: 22-11014 Document: 69-1 Date Filed: 04/24/2024 Page: 5 of 18

22-11014 Opinion of the Court 5

through Holiday. 2 Because their cases differ slightly, we recap the rest of Holden’s and Mayer’s cases individually. A. Holden’s Case On June 25, 2016, Holden entered into a purchase agree- ment with Holiday to buy a timeshare in Las Vegas. The same day, Holden obtained a promissory note to finance most of the pur- chase. The note required Holden to make 120 monthly payments. Also on the same day, Holden executed a mortgage securing pay- ment of the note. Among other conditions, the closing and title provision of the purchase agreement stated that the transaction would not close until Holden made the first three monthly payments and Holiday recorded the declaration in Holden’s name. The purchase agree- ment also included a purchaser’s default provision.3 That provision stated, “[u]pon [Holden’s] default or breach of any term or condi- tion of this Agreement, all sums paid hereunder by [Holden] shall be retained by [Holiday] as liquidated damages, not as a penalty, and the parties hereto shall be relieved from all obligations

2 Technically, Holden and Mayer financed their timeshares through Wilson

Resort Finance, LLC. However, as the District Court in Holden’s case noted, the parties treat Holiday and Wilson as the same entity. 3 The parties and the District Courts sometimes refer to the purchaser’s default

provision as the “liquidated damages provision,” “liquidation provision,” or “liquidation clause.” We use “purchaser’s default provision” since that is how it appears in the purchase agreements. USCA11 Case: 22-11014 Document: 69-1 Date Filed: 04/24/2024 Page: 6 of 18

6 Opinion of the Court 22-11014

hereunder.” The agreement also said that “[a]ny Note Payments made by [Holden] prior to closing shall be subject to the default provisions.” After making her third payment, Holden defaulted and hired an attorney. On March 9, 2017, Holden’s attorney notified Holiday that Holden “no longer intend[ed] to make further payments” be- cause “she allege[d] her sales transaction was fraudulently repre- sented at the time of sale and/or another reason exist[ed] for non- payment, such as [her] inability to continue to fund the purchase.” Two weeks later, Holden’s attorney sent another letter. In the sec- ond letter, Holden tried to cancel the agreement citing language from the closing and purchaser’s default provisions. Holiday disagreed that the agreement was canceled. On June 19, 2017, it recorded the timeshare deed. It also reported the delinquent debt to Experian. In response, Holden’s attorney sent three dispute letters to Holiday. Holiday investigated the dispute but determined that its reporting was accurate because it con- cluded that Holden was still obligated under the note. Holden then sued Holiday alleging various violations of Florida law and the FCRA. Pertinent here is Count IV of Holden’s complaint. Under Count IV, Holden claimed that Holiday re- ported inaccurate information to Experian, failed to conduct an ap- propriate investigation, and failed to correct the inaccuracies—all of which were required under the FCRA. The parties later cross- USCA11 Case: 22-11014 Document: 69-1 Date Filed: 04/24/2024 Page: 7 of 18

22-11014 Opinion of the Court 7

moved for partial summary judgment on Count IV—the only re- maining claim against Holiday.4 The District Court granted Holiday’s motion and denied Holden’s. The court reasoned that a plaintiff asserting a claim against a furnisher for fail- ure to conduct a reasonable investigation cannot pre- vail on the claim without demonstrating that had the furnisher conducted a reasonable investigation, the result would have been different; i.e., that the fur- nisher would have discovered that the information it reported was inaccurate or incomplete. Holden v. Holiday Inn Club Vacations Inc., No. 6:19-cv-2373-CEM-EJK, 2022 WL 993572, at *2 (M.D. Fla. Feb. 28, 2022) (quoting Felts v.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
98 F.4th 1359, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/tanethia-holden-v-holiday-inn-club-vacations-incorporated-ca11-2024.