Big New Jersey Hunstein Win

A trio of New Jersey Hunstein-style cases were recently heard in the state’s appellate courts. While now on appeal to the New Jersey Supreme Court, all three reached the same ruling: hiring a vendor to print and mail debt collection letters isn’t a federal Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA) offense or a state law claim. 

Hunstein History 

The original case, Hunstein v. Preferred, involved a consumer who incurred a debt to a hospital for medical bills. The hospital assigned the debt to Preferred, who then hired Compumail, a third-party mail vendor, to create, print and mail a “dunning” letter (a collection letter that requests payment) to the consumer. This was done by electronically transmitting certain information about the debt, including the consumer’s name, outstanding balance, the origin of the debt (his son’s medical treatment) and his son’s name. 

That case was dismissed by the district court, was reversed with an appeal opinion in April 2021, and then in September 2021 the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an en blanc decision vacating the previous decisions, as we covered in a previous article. 

Americollect Hunstein Case 

In May, 2025, Americollect had its own Hunstein-style case in the New Jersey Appellate court. That case, Miller v. Americollect, Inc., was dismissed and is pending appeal with the New Jersey Supreme Court. In this case, the plaintiff claimed a FDCPA violation for using a third-party vendor to print and mail a debt collection letter. The original complaint was dismissed with prejudice in mid-January 2024 for not meeting the requirements for an FDCPA complaint. 

Recent New Jersey Hunstein Cases 

In three separate New Jersey Hunstein cases, Jones v. American Coradius, Hopkins v. Convergent Outsourcing, and Elshabba v. Jefferson Capital Systems, the appellate panels all agreed with the collectors that it is not an FDCPA violation to use a printer to send letters. The court also ruled that the FDCPA’s prohibition on communicating with third parties is intended to protect consumers from disclosing information about a debt to family members, friends, or others where it might cause embarrassment. 

Giving information needed to fill in the blanks of a collection letter is an administrative function, the appellate courts ruled. It is outside the scope of the privacy violations Congress sought to prevent when it enacted the FDCPA. 

The courts chastised the consumer lawyers, saying, “We’ve checked your complaint and figured out that this isn’t what Congress had in mind when creating the FDCPA. Congress was actually trying to stop real abusive practices, not criminalizing the outsourcing of printing to Kinko’s.” 

While this could still reach the New Jersey Supreme Court with the pending writs for review, Americollect will follow any new developments in New Jersey Hunstein cases and beyond.