Austin Stuart Fraase v. Advantage Credit Bureau

United States Court of Appeals
For the Eighth Circuit
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No. 25-1872
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Austin Stuart Fraase
Plaintiff - Appellant
v.
Advantage Credit Bureau
Defendant - Appellee
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Appeal from United States District Court
for the District of North Dakota - Eastern
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Submitted: March 17, 2026
Filed: June 25, 2026
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Before COLLOTON, Chief Judge, GRUENDER and KOBES, Circuit Judges.
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KOBES, Circuit Judge.
Austin Stuart Fraase sued Advantage Credit Bureau under the Fair Credit
Reporting Act (FCRA) after Advantage mistakenly reported his twin brother Aaron
Stuart Fraase’s speeding ticket in a background check. See 15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq.

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The district court1 granted summary judgment because Advantage followed
reasonable procedures and because Austin had no damages. We affirm.
I. Background
Austin was a seasonal employee at the Fargo Parks District when he applied
for a full-time job as a maintenance technician. Fargo Parks ordered a background
check from Advantage. The criminal search section of the background report listed
a conviction for “Speeding 24 Mph Over Limit,” though the motor vehicle report
section showed a clean driving record.
When Fargo Parks received the report, a human resources employee emailed
Austin’s seasonal supervisor asking him to “[p]lease make sure [Austin was] not
speeding in any park district vehicles.” The supervisor told Austin the ticket was
not “a very good look.” When Austin objected that the report was inaccurate, the
HR employee said she would “look into [it] over the weekend” and that Austin didn’t
“have to worry about anything with [his] interview.” HR also emailed Austin’s
supervisor telling him “[i]t’s looking like [the background check] may have been
r[un] for his brother instead.”
Fargo Parks then ordered a second background check from Advantage, which
again showed the speeding ticket. The HR employee again reassured Austin that he
“had nothing to worry about.” During his interview Austin explained that his brother
received the ticket. Fargo Parks offered Austin the full-time job, which he accepted
and started on schedule.
Advantage mailed adverse action notices to Austin informing him of his right
under the FCRA to dispute the accuracy of the reports. Austin instead sued in federal
1 The Honorable Peter D. Welte, Chief Judge, United States District Court for
the District of North Dakota.

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district court, alleging that Advantage failed to follow reasonable procedures to
“assure maximum possible accuracy.” 15 U.S.C. § 1681e(b).
During discovery, the Advantage employee who prepared the first report
explained that she searched the North Dakota Courts’ website using Austin’s first
and last name and date of birth. The search returned Aaron’s speeding ticket because
the West Fargo Municipal Court grouped the brothers together under one “case
jacket.” She clicked into the case jacket and saw Austin listed as an “also known
as” for Aaron. The employee who performed the second background check testified
that she followed Advantage’s policy of matching full names and dates of birth when
reporting information and that it was “not uncommon for people to go by other
names that we’re not aware of” or for the criminal and motor vehicle portions of the
report to “not [] match up.”
Neither party produced a record of what the court website displayed when
Advantage ran the search. Advantage produced a report from the court’s internal
Odyssey docketing system that lists Austin as an alias for Aaron and shows two
different driver’s license numbers. The parties dispute whether Advantage
employees saw this information when running Austin’s reports.
II. Standard of Review and Legal Framework
We review the district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo and affirm
if there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the moving party is entitled
to judgment as a matter of law. TCF Nat’l Bank v. Mkt. Intel., Inc., 812 F.3d 701,
707 (8th Cir. 2016); Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). The FCRA requires consumer reporting
agencies to “follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of
the information concerning [an] individual” whenever they prepare consumer
reports. 15 U.S.C. § 1681e(b); see also Hauser v. Equifax, Inc., 602 F.2d 811, 814
(8th Cir. 1979) (“The Act provides for recovery by a consumer upon a showing of
willful or negligent failure to follow reasonable procedures.”). Advantage reported
inaccurate information. The only question is whether it “follow[ed] reasonable

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procedures.” And while this is often a jury question, “[w]hen the evidence is so one-
sided as to leave no room for any reasonable difference of opinion as to how the case
should be decided, it should be decided by the court as a matter of law.” Hauser,
602 F.2d at 814 (citation omitted).
III. Analysis
Advantage accurately entered Austin’s first name, last name, and date of birth
into the North Dakota Courts’ website search. The search returned Aaron’s speeding
ticket in a “case jacket” that listed Aaron and Austin as the same person. Relying
on that information, both Advantage employees included the ticket in Austin’s
background checks.
Austin first argues that it was unreasonable for Advantage to rely on the court
website. But “[t]he FCRA is not a strict liability statute.” Rydholm v. Equifax Info.
Serv. LLC, 44 F.4th 1105, 1108 (8th Cir. 2022). A consumer reporting agency is not
liable when “information [] received from a source that it reasonably believes is
reputable [] turns out to be inaccurate unless the agency receives notice of systemic
problems with its procedures.” Id. (citation omitted). Advantage reasonably
believed that the official website for the North Dakota Courts was a reputable source.
Cf. Henson v. CSC Credit Serv., 29 F.3d 280, 285 (7th Cir. 1994) (holding that, as a
matter of law, “a credit reporting agency is not liable under the FCRA for reporting
inaccurate information obtained from a court’s Judgment Docket, absent prior
notice”). Though not the official judgment docket, Advantage’s reliance was
reasonable because the website served as a public-facing repository of North Dakota
court records and Austin has presented no evidence that it “lacked reliability as a
source.” Rydholm, 44 F.4th at 1109. Holding otherwise “would require credit
reporting agencies to go beyond the face of numerous court records to determine
whether they correctly report” information. Henson, 29 F.3d at 285.
Things might be different if there was evidence of “systemic problems” with
the website, but there is not. See Rydholm, 44 F.4th at 1108. The boilerplate

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disclaimer that it could contain inaccuracies does not change our view. Neither does
the inconsistency between the report of a speeding ticket and the clean driving
record. Advantage’s corporate representative testified that North Dakota state
records were not always provided to the data vendor Advantage used for the driving
record part of the report. So, as another Advantage employee similarly testified, it
was “not uncommon” for different sections of a report to conflict.
Second, Austin argues that Advantage should have written procedures for
twins or similar names. See Dalton v. Cap. Associated Indus., Inc., 257 F.3d 409,
417 (4th Cir. 2001). We are not sure why that would have mattered here because
Austin doesn’t claim that Advantage knew he was a twin. But even if he did, the
court’s “case jacket” told Advantage that Austin and Aaron were aliases. Advantage
reasonably relied on that. Along these lines, Austin also says that Advantage did not
follow its policy of only reporting information with matching full names and dates
of birth. This is contradicted by the record. Both employees testified they reported
the speeding ticket “because it was a full name, date of birth match.” See TCF Nat’l
Bank, 812 F.3d at 707.
Finally, Austin argues that the Odyssey report suggests the Advantage
employees may have seen two different driver’s license numbers, along with the
speeding ticket listed under Aaron’s name. He argues these were facial inaccuracies
which required Advantage to “look beyond the information furnished.” See
Rydholm, 44 F.4th at 1108–09. But again the court website showed the two brothers
as the same person and there is no evidence that the Advantage employees saw the
Odyssey report or that the driver’s license numbers were included on the public-
facing version of the website they did see. And besides, different first names and
driver’s license numbers are not the type of facial inaccuracies that would require
Advantage to dig deeper where the court website grouped all the information in the
same “jacket.” Compare Hauser, 602 F.2d at 816 (“misspelling of a source’s name
[was] a minor error” and did not “support a finding of willful or even negligent
failure to follow reasonable procedures”), with Cortez v. Trans Union, LLC, 617
F.3d 688, 710 (3d Cir. 2010) (finding negligence where “there existed a large

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discrepancy in regard to [plaintiff’s] last name, middle name, . . . date of birth[,
and] . . . citizenship”).2 Demanding Advantage do more “would [] require credit
reporting agencies to engage in background research which would substantially
increase the cost of their services” to customers and consumers. Henson, 29 F.3d at
285.
Because Advantage followed reasonable procedures, we do not address the
district court’s conclusion that Austin did not suffer actual damages. See Rydholm,
44 F.4th at 1109 (“That [plaintiff’s] credit reports may have ‘contained inaccurate
information is not in itself sufficient for the imposition of liability.’” (quoting
Hauser, 602 F.2d at 814)).
Affirmed.
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2 Austin speculates that Advantage’s claim that it relied on the court website
is a post hoc explanation to avoid liability, but he has no “specific facts” to support
this. TCF Nat’l Bank, 812 F.3d at 707. Advantage said that “the court system” was
the source of the information. Although some employees weren’t “exactly sure”
which document included the alias, the one who prepared the first report said that
“the North Dakota Court’s website . . . contained [the] information.”

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