A rental application is decided in a day or two, and often the decision is made by a report rather than by a person. If the report described someone else’s eviction, someone else’s criminal record, or a debt that was never yours, the apartment is usually gone before you find out why. Correcting the record afterward does not get the apartment back — but it can put the company that produced the report on the hook for what its mistake cost you.
What goes wrong on a tenant screening report
- Another person’s record attached to your file. The most common cause is a name match with a loose identifier — a shared surname, a partial date of birth, an old address in common.
- An eviction filing reported as an eviction. A case that was dismissed, withdrawn, settled, or decided in your favor can still appear as a housing-court record with no outcome attached.
- Criminal records that are sealed, expunged, or somebody else’s — and records reported without the disposition, so a dismissed charge reads like a conviction.
- Debts that are paid, discharged in bankruptcy, or not yours, carried onto the rental report from a credit file.
- A duplicate of the same item, so one problem looks like a pattern.
Why the screening company is answerable, not just the landlord
A tenant screening company is a consumer reporting agency, and the report it sells about you is a consumer report. That puts it under the same statute as the credit bureaus.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires a consumer reporting agency to follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of the information it reports about you. When you dispute an item, it must conduct a reasonable reinvestigation, and the company that supplied the information has its own duty to investigate, review what the agency sent it, and report back.
Whether either of them actually did that is recorded in their own systems — the dispute file, the codes passed between them, the record of what a human being reviewed, if anyone did. Those records come out in a case and nowhere else. A dispute letter is answered by whatever the company chooses to tell you; litigation is answered by what it has to produce.
What the statute allows
For a negligent violation, a consumer may recover any actual damages sustained as a result of the failure, together with the costs of the action and reasonable attorney’s fees as determined by the court.
For a willful violation, a consumer may recover actual damages or statutory damages of not less than $100 and not more than $1,000, plus such punitive damages as the court may allow, and again costs and reasonable attorney’s fees.
In a housing case the actual damages are usually concrete and easy to describe: the application fees paid on places you did not get, a larger security deposit or a co-signer demanded because of the report, the cost of a short-term rental or a move you had not planned, a longer commute from the place you settled for, and the months spent trying to correct something that would not be corrected.
The deadline
An action must be brought no later than two years after you discover the violation, or five years after the violation occurred, whichever comes first. Rental decisions move quickly and the paperwork is easy to lose, so write down the date you first saw the report.
What to keep, starting now
- The screening report itself, and the date you obtained it
- Any notice you were given saying the application was denied, and anything in it that names the company that supplied the report
- The dispute you sent, and proof of when it was sent
- Every response, including any letter saying the item was verified
- Documents showing the entry is wrong — a docket sheet showing the case was dismissed, an expungement order, a payoff letter, a discharge order
- Receipts: application fees, holding deposits, temporary housing, moving costs
You are entitled to a copy of the report a screening company holds on you. Requesting it is the first step, because the claim is built on what the report actually said.
What it costs
The fee provision is written into the Act: in a successful action the costs and reasonable attorney’s fees are recoverable from the defendant, as determined by the court. That is why this work is handled on a contingency basis rather than billed by the hour.
You pay nothing unless we win.
Where your situation fits
If the report was an employment background check rather than a rental one, see our page on the background check lawyer, and on suing a background check company. If the problem is on your credit file rather than a screening report, see credit report errors lawyer. Where a dispute has already failed and the question is who can be sued, the FCRA lawsuit page sets that out. Our directory of tenant screening companies lists who to contact for a copy of your report.
Have your report reviewed
The Kim Law Firm represents consumers in Fair Credit Reporting Act cases against tenant screening companies, the credit bureaus, the specialty reporting agencies, and the companies that furnish information to them. Send us the report and the denial and we will tell you whether we see a claim.
Contact us to have your screening report reviewed.
Admitted in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; available to appear pro hac vice in other federal courts.