Brown v. Mortensen, 51 Cal. 4th 1052 (Cal. 2011)
Facts: Plaintiffs sued Mortensen, a debt collector, alleging violations of the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act, related to the debt collector's disclosure of Plaintiffs' and their children's medical information to the CRAs. Mortensen argued that those claims were preempted because the operative complaint stated that Plaintiffs complained to the CRAs that the disclosures were inaccurate and, alternatively, because the Plaintiffs' claims rest on the idea that Defendant misled the CRAs by incorrectly implying either that Plaintiffs' children owed a debt or that their medical records were in some way relevant to Plaintiffs' disputed debt. Defendant argued that Plaintiffs' allegations brought the claim within § 1681s-2(a)'s regulation of furnisher accuracy and thus § 1681t(b)(1)(F)'s preemptive scope. The trial court and court of appeal concluded that Plaintiffs' claims were preempted by the FCRA. The California Supreme Court reversed the lower courts and concluded that Plaintiffs' state law claims, as pleaded, were not preempted because they involved issues neither of accuracy nor of credit dispute resolution and therefore did not involve the same subject matter as § 1681s-2.
Preemption. The Court determined that Defendant's argument mistook the nature of a Confidentiality Act claim, both in the abstract and as pleaded. That the information disclosed was inaccurate is not an element of a claim; instead it requires only that the disclosure, whether true or not, occurred without authorization. Plaintiffs' causes of action repeatedly alleged that the disclosures occurred, were unauthorized, and injured Plaintiffs. Under such claim Plaintiffs are not required to show that the disclosures were inaccurate or misleading. Nor did the Complaint establish that any of Defendant's disclosures were made in the course of responding to official notice of a credit information dispute, such that § 1681s-2(b) would apply. Therefore, the Court concluded that Plaintiffs' claims were not preempted.
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