UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS August 8, 2022

Christopher M. Wolpert FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT Clerk of Court _________________________________

JASON E. TAVERNARO,

Plaintiff - Appellant,

v. No. 20-3219

PIONEER CREDIT RECOVERY, INC.,

Defendant - Appellee. _________________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Kansas (D.C. No. 2:20-CV-02141-KHV-ADM) _________________________________

Christopher E. Roberts, Butsch Roberts & Associates, LLC, Clayton, Missouri (Mark D. Molner, Molner Law Group, LLC, Kansas City, Missouri, with him on the briefs), for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Lisa M. Simonetti, Greenberg Traurig, LLP, Los Angeles, California (Lindsay N. Aherne, Greenberg Traurig, LLP, Denver, Colorado, with her on the brief), for Defendant-Appellee. _________________________________

Before TYMKOVICH, Chief Judge, HARTZ and McHUGH, Circuit Judges. _________________________________

TYMKOVICH, Chief Judge. _________________________________

This case requires us to consider whether Pioneer Credit Recovery, Inc.,

violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) when it sent Jason

Tavernaro a letter attempting to collect a student loan debt. The district court Appellate Case: 20-3219 Document: 010110721594 Date Filed: 08/08/2022 Page: 2

dismissed Mr. Tavernaro’s complaint for failure to state a claim because the

alleged facts were insufficient to establish that Pioneer used materially

misleading, unfair, or unconscionable means to collect the debt, as required by

the FDCPA.

We affirm. We conclude that violations of 15 U.S.C. § 1692e for false or

misleading communications must be material, and materiality is determined

through the perspective of the reasonable consumer. Applying that standard, we

find Pioneer’s letter was not materially misleading. And because Mr.

Tavernaro’s other claim under § 1692f for unfair communications was similarly

based on the § 1692e claim, we conclude his § 1692f claim also fails.

I. Background

A. Factual Background

Jason Tavernaro borrowed money through the Family Federal Education

Loan program to pay for schooling, and then he defaulted on that debt. The

defaulted debt was sold to Educational Credit Management Corporation

(ECMC)—a federal student loan guaranty agency—which then contracted with

Pioneer Credit Recovery, Inc., to help collect the debt. 1

In February 2020, in an attempt to collect the outstanding balance, Pioneer

sent Mr. Tavernaro’s employer a packet containing an Order of Withholding from

1 Mr. Tavernaro denies that he owes the debt. Some of the information in this paragraph was derived from Pioneer’s brief, and we do not consider it in our analysis. We recount it merely for context.

2 Appellate Case: 20-3219 Document: 010110721594 Date Filed: 08/08/2022 Page: 3

Earnings. The Order required Mr. Tavernaro’s employer to withhold a portion of

his earnings and then remit the withheld wages to Pioneer.

The entire packet contained seven pages. The first two pages are a letter

addressed to Mr. Tavernaro’s employer that provided information about Mr.

Tavernaro’s alleged debt and ordered his employer to garnish his wages and send

them to Pioneer. 2 The third page is an “Employer Acknowledgement of Wage

Withholding,” which—like its title suggests—was to be filled out by Mr.

Tavernaro’s employer and returned to Pioneer

Click Here to Read the rest of this document