The Seventh Circuit upheld summary judgment for a class of Cingular wireless customers against a debt-collecting firm, AFNI, Inc.  The customers' contracts with Cingular permitted recovery of "collection agency" fees "incurred by CINGULAR" or that "we incur".  But AFNI didn't act as a collection agency; it instead bought the customers' debts from Cingular outright.  Neither the contracts nor Wisconsin law therefore authorized AFNI to charge a collection fee.  By charging a fee it had no legal right to collect, the court held, AFNI violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act as a matter of law.  Seeger v. AFNI, Inc., No. 07-4083 (7th Cir. Dec. 8, 2008).

The court also concluded that AFNI's ignorance of the law didn't count as a "bona fide error" that might've absolved it from liability.

 "The time has come for someone to put his foot down. And that foot is me."