HARRISBURG -- Student loan servicer Navient was presented with a court order in Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro's lawsuit that requires the company to produce disputed records of borrowers.
U.S. District Judge Robert Mariani, on the bench of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, issued a 14-page order on Oct. 17 in the lawsuit filed by Shapiro against Navient Corp. The Commonwealth sued the company over allegations of harming student loan borrowers both in Pennsylvania and across the U.S.
As previously reported by Pennsylvania Record, Navient has filed a motion to dismiss the suit, calling it a copycat lawsuit that is "pointless" and "legally deficient."
Navient alleges Shapiro's lawsuit parrots a complaint filed in January 2017 by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). In that complaint, the CFPB alleges Navient violated the Consumer Financial Protection Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and Regulation V of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
In his order, Mariani asked, "Can Navient entirely withhold production of student loan borrower records that are in the physical possession of Navient because they may be 'legally' owned by ED [Education Department]?," as it claimed that the records belonged to the U.S. Department of Education.
Mariani also pointed that "the court will not withhold its ruling on this discovery dispute, nor will it stay discovery of the borrower records entirely, merely because there is a motion to dismiss pending," and ordered that the parties "meet and confer to resolve potential burden, scope, and relevancy issues" related to the records.
The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania Case No. is 3:17-cv-01814-RDM.