Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP is pleased to announce that partners David Schultz and Justin Penn have been re-elected as Legal Advisory Board (LAB) Members of the Consumer Relations Consortium (CRC) for the 2024 term.

A story on a significant Hinshaw client win—Quaglia v. SN Servicing, McCalla Raymer Leibert Pierce—ranked among the Top Ten most popular daily decision articles published by the Association of Credit and Collection Professionals (ACA) in 2023.

In a case defended by Hinshaw partner David Schultz, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently upheld the dismissal of a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) lawsuit, affirming that confusion leading one to hire an attorney and pay an appearance fee does not establish Article III standing. The decision was given extensive coverage by legal and accounts receivable trade publications.

Learn how Hinshaw partner David Schultz and the firm played a "crucial role" in shaping Illinois’ new coerced debt protection law, and what it means for collection agencies and consumer rights, as featured in the ACA Daily.

Read Hinshaw partner David Schultz's column analyzing a significant U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit decision that overturned a lower court’s decision not to compel arbitration in a Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) case.

Read how a team of Hinshaw attorneys collaborated to contribute six chapters in the 2025 edition of the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education (IICLE) "Attorneys' Legal Liability" handbook.

Hinshaw partners David Schultz and Vaishali Rao will present at ComplianceCon 2025 in Nashville, Tennessee.

Join industry-leading automotive finance attorneys in Chicago on May 1, 2025, for a day-long complimentary seminar on the latest federal and state developments impacting consumer and commercial lending within the industry.

Hinshaw partners Justin Penn, David Schultz, and Vaishali Rao will present at the firm-sponsored ARM Law conference in Nashville, Tennessee. On Tuesday, September 17, Schultz will co-present a panel on "TCPA Compliance Update: Navigating Recent Rulings." On Wednesday, September 18, Penn and Rao will respectively present on panels titled "Litigation Update" and "Interacting with Regulators: Strategies for Positive Outcomes."

Chicago-based partner David Schultz will co-present an AccountsRecovery.net webinar titled "State vs. Federal Court: Deciding Where to Defend Yourself," on May 12, 2025.

Chicago-based partner David Schultz will co-present an AccountsRecovery.net webinar titled "First Quarter Litigation Update," on March 20, 2025.

In partnership with Palinode, AccountsRecovery.net and Chicago-based partner David Schultz will participate in a "Ask The Credit Reporting Expert " webinar on June 23, 2022. Credit reporting is constantly in flux and complicated for the accounts receivable industry. Schultz and his fellow panelist will help answer questions in an extensive Q&A session.

Explore the evolving legal landscape of data breach claims, examining on how courts define actual injury and standing requirements in light of recent rulings.

Today, Hunstein took another unique—but favorable—turn for the debt collection industry. The Eleventh Circuit Court of appeals issued an order vacating its last opinion in Hunstein vs. Preferred Collection & Management Services, Inc, and ordered the case to be reheard en banc.

On February 8, 2024, the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in Department of Agricultural Rural Development Rural Housing Service v. Kirtz by holding that a consumer may sue the government under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) for providing false information to the credit reporting agencies.

On September 8, 2022, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals gave its final word—after many twists and turns—in Hunstein v. Preferred Collection and Management Services, Inc., No. 19-14434. The court issued an en banc opinion (that is, the case was decided by all the judges in the circuit—not merely the typical three-judge panel) holding that a debt collector's use of a mail vendor did not create a concrete injury necessary to give the plaintiff Article III standing to sue in federal court.

In Hunstein v. Preferred Collection and Management Services, the Eleventh Circuit drastically altered the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act landscape when, in April of 2021, it determined that the statute was implicated when a debt collector used a third-party vendor to mail notices (violating the FDCPA's prohibition of relaying information about the debtor to a third party). Since then, the case has been subject to both a petition for rehearing and a petition for rehearing en banc, and a decision has been eagerly awaited—particularly in the wake of the intervening Supreme Court TransUnion v. Ramirez decision, which seemingly undercut the original Hunstein decision's reasoning.

The Illinois Genetic Information Privacy Act (“GIPA”) was enacted in 1998, and although minimal litigation followed in the years following its enaction, we are now seeing a significant surge in litigation similar to that experienced under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”).

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Second Circuit Certifies to N.Y. Court of Appeals Questions Regarding Whether N.Y.C. Local Law 15, Which Regulates Debt Collection Agencies, Impermissibly Regulates Attorney Conduct

Second Circuit Holds No Prior Express Consent Under TCPA After Plaintiff Disclosed His Cell Phone Number to Creditor