It was “a close call,” the judge said, but a debt collection letter's invitation to “please call” the collector to discuss the possibility of insurance coverage was found to violate the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson of the District of New Jersey granted summary judgment to the plaintiff and certified a class of plaintiffs in the decision, where she “decline[d] to impose on the least sophisticated debtor the obligation to draw a narrow legal distinction between 'resolving' and 'disputing' a debt.”

“The least sophisticated debtor could reasonably be misled into calling—rather than writing—to dispute a debt by claiming that the insurance provider is the liable party,” Wolfson wrote on Dec. 13 in Kassin v. AR Resources, adding that the Third Circuit “has taken a broad view of what types of 'call' language contradict or overshadow a validation notice.”