In Kirkman v. Blitt and Gaines, P.C., the plaintiff sued the defendant in the Northern District of Illinois alleging violations of the Federal Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) for sending her a letter by regular mail instead of email. The court found that the plaintiff lacked standing and granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss.
The plaintiff claimed that as a full-time nursing student, the only convenient way to contact her was by email, and she provided her email address to the defendant. When the defendant responded via a letter sent through regular mail, she filed suit, claiming invasion of privacy, intrusion upon seclusion, embarrassment, loss of productive time, emotional distress, frustration, anger and humiliation.
To establish standing, a plaintiff must show a real injury. While such injury does not need to be concrete — such as privacy or reputational harms — under Seventh Circuit precedent, emotional harms are too abstract to confer standing. The plaintiff’s alleged harms were all emotional — stress and anxiety — and thus deemed insufficient. Her allegation of intrusion upon seclusion similarly failed because the delivery of a routine letter by the postal service did not rise to the level of a highly offensive intrusion. The court finally noted that a plaintiff cannot claim financial harm solely from the costs of litigation; otherwise, every plaintiff would have standing.
Because the plaintiff failed to allege an actual injury, the court did not have subject matter jurisdiction over the claims and granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss.