Santa Clara, CA: A class action lawsuit alleging violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FACTA) has been filed against InfoMart by a man who claims he was denied a job with the company because of false information they had obtained through pre-employment screening.
According to the suit, filed by Robert Mills of West Virginia, Mills applied for a job at InforMart in 2015. However the defendant reported that they had obtained information regarding a civil judgment that had been entered against him in 2010, when he was on active military duty, but failed to mention in the report that it had been vacated. Further, the complaint states that InfoMart also reported a criminal record belonging to a different Robert Mills.
In his complaint Mills alleges he was turned down for the job he applied for shortly after InfoMart completed his background check in April. When he wrote to InfoMart in December and asked for his file, he discovered the alleged incorrect information the defendant had received. Under the rules of the FCRA, consumer reporting agencies must either notify job applicants if they report adverse public records to an employer to give the applicant time to correct false information, or adhere to strict procedures designed to ensure that the information is always complete and up-to-date. According to the suit, InfoMart did neither of those things.
“Defendant failed to comply with the contemporaneous notice requirement ... because it sent plaintiff no notice when it reported this information,” the complaint states. “And defendant entirely failed to report the complete up-to-date criminal and civil-judgment records — it did not and systemically does not obtain full personal identifiers with its criminal records and does not obtain up-to-date dispositions for its civil record.”
Further, Mills alleges that InfoMart failed to adhere to the FCRA statute that stipulates consumer reporting agencies must disclose the sources of the information they report. Instead, InfoMart acted as if they had gathered the information themselves. However, He later learned that his background information was obtained from TransUnion.
“Defendant is aware of its obligations under the FCRA, but chooses not to comply because the costs of compliance would harm its bottom line and impair its business model,” the suit states. “Discovery will show that defendant routinely fails to reveal its true sources of public-record information, like TransUnion, in its FCRA file disclosures. It makes this choice despite the clearly worded requirement in the FCRA that [consumer reporting agencies] reveal the sources of the information they report.”
Mills seeks to represent a nationwide class, or in the alternative a class of West Virginia consumers, who requested a copy of their report from InfoMart and received a copy that failed to identify the sources of the background information.
He further seeks to represent a nationwide or state class of people who were subject to a report sold by InfoMart within the last two years that contained at least one adverse civil judgment which had previously been vacated.
Mills is represented by John W. Barrett and Ryan M. Donovan of Bailey & Glasser LLP, Kristi C. Kelly and Andrew J. Guzzo of Kelly & Crandall PLC and Leonard A. Bennett and Craig C. Marchiando of Consumer Litigation Associates PC.
The case is Robert Mills II v. Infomart Inc., case number 3:17-cv-00048, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia.
