Woman awarded 18.6 million dollars in lawsuit against Equifax

Thursday, August 1, 2013

A jury awarded Julie Miller of Marion County, Oregon $18.6 million last Friday in a federal lawsuit against Equifax. The lawsuit claimed she spent two years trying to get Equifax Information Services to fix major mistakes on her credit report which cost her the opportunities to get new credit.

Miller said she had contacted Equifax several times to dispute the incorrect information in her credit report such as incorrect SSN, date of birth, and account information. She was not aware of these problems until December 2009 when a bank denied her credit. She said other credit bureaus corrected errors when she contacted them, but Equifax didn't.

Portland attorney Justin Baxter, involved in Miller's case, said, "There was damage to her reputation, a breach of her privacy and the lost opportunity to seek credit. [...] She has a brother who is disabled and who can't get credit on his own, and she wasn't able to help him." To ABC News he said, "She did what you're supposed to do. She didn't go running straight to the courthouse. [...] We found that when complaints would come in, they'd run them through a scanner and then send them overseas."

Equifax declined to comment on this lawsuit to ABC News or Associated Press.

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Sources

Alan Farnham. "Jury Awards $18.6M For Equifax Credit Report Mix-up" — ABC News, July 29, 2013
AP. "Oregon woman: $18.6M, credit bureau: 0" — USA Today, July 28, 2013

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Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.