Raymond James Financial Adverse Information FCRA Class Action

This class action alleges that Raymond James Financial, Inc. violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) by not giving plaintiff Dustin Kampert a copy of his background report and allowing him time to correct problems in it before the company made an employment decision.

The class for this action includes all persons to whom Raymond James denied approval to see its products or services through an employer because of a Smarlinx Person Report on January 6, 2012 through the pendency of this action.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act was designed to provide fairness to the subjects of consumer background reports. The act regulates not only credit reporting agencies (CRAs) who create the reports but also the employers or prospective employers who use them, and it was Raymond’s alleged failure to observe the users’ rules that led to this lawsuit.

Raymond is a national and international financial-services business who users financial advisers or registered representatives to handle the buying and selling of Raymond’s securities. In July 2015, the complaint says, as part of plaintiff Dustin Kampert’s work for Hake Investment Group, LLC, he was required to apply to get a Series VII stockbroker’s license in order to buy and sell financial service products. The license, it says, was to be sponsored by Raymond.

According to the complaint, as part of the process, Kampert signed a document purporting to authorize Raymond to obtain a consumer background report about him for employment purposes, and Raymond then obtained a LexisNexis Smartlinx Person Report on approximately July 8, 2015. The report, the complaint alleges, contained Virginia criminal history public records information that was expunged from Kampert’s record in October 2008 and that should therefore not have been included in the report. The complaint claims that Virginia does not expunge records if the person is convicted of the charge.

Because of the improperly reported information, the complaint alleges, Raymond did not sponsor Kampert for the Series VII license as well as employment in selling its financial products. In fact, the complaint claims that this incident resulted in Kampert losing his job with Hake Investment Group as well.

However, according to the complaint, as a “user” under the terms of the FCRA, Raymond was obliged to provide Kampert with a copy of the report and a written summary of his rights under the law. The complaint alleges that the report was a consumer report to be used for employment purposes and not for other purposes (such as suspected misconduct) that would have excused Raymond from these obligations. According to the complaint, Raymond did not do these things, which might have allowed Kampert to correct the wrongly-listed information, and only informed Kampert of the adverse information after it had made its adverse judgment against him.

Raymond, it says, therefore failed to provide pre-adverse action notice and made impermissible use of a consumer report.

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer
Tags: FCRA, Failure to provide subject with a copy of report, Failure to provide subject with summary of rights under FCRA