Gregory Light v. LVNV Funding, LLC

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FOR PUBLICATION

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 25-12041

____________________

GREGORY LIGHT,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

versus

LVNV FUNDING, LLC

and ANDREU PALMA LAVIN & SOLIS, PLLC,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Florida

D.C. Docket No. 1:24-cv-61655-AHS

____________________

Before ROSENBAUM, LAGOA, and MARCUS, Circuit Judges.

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2 Opinion of the Court 25-12041

LAGOA, Circuit Judge:

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act authorizes suits by

“any person” harmed by a debt collector’s prohibited conduct. 15

U.S.C. §§ 1692d, 1692k(a). Ordinarily, the “person” who chooses

to file suit is the consumer whose debt is being collected. Appellant

Gregory Light, a Florida attorney, urges us to hold that the “per-

son” can also be him, suing in his own name for the embarrass-

ment, distress, and lost time he experienced while representing a

client in a debt-collection action that did not go smoothly.

After careful review and with the benefit of oral argument,

we dismiss this appeal for lack of jurisdiction because Light has not

alleged a concrete injury in fact sufficient to establish Article III

standing.

I. BACKGROUND1

Light is a Florida attorney who regularly represents individ-

uals in consumer-debt matters. Appellee LVNV Funding LLC

(“LVNV”) is a debt-collection company, and Appellee Andreu

Palma Lavin & Solis, PLLC (“APLS”) is the law firm LVNV re-

tained to collect an alleged debt from Franklyn Rodriguez. In April

2023, LVNV, through APLS, sued Rodriguez in Broward County,

Florida Court. The case was assigned to the small-claims division.

1 We draw the following facts from Light’s First Amended Complaint and the

documents attached to it. We accept as true the facts as set forth in the First

Amended Complaint and draw all reasonable inferences in Light’s favor. Ran-

dall v. Scott, 610 F.3d 701, 705 (11th Cir. 2010).

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25-12041 Opinion of the Court 3

On August 22, 2023, the day before a scheduled pretrial conference,

Rodriguez retained Light to represent him. Light then contacted

APLS to try to resolve the case before the pretrial conference. Ac-

cording to the First Amended Complaint, the parties reached an

agreement in principle to resolve the case, and APLS represented

to Light that it would inform the county court of the settlement at

the next day’s pretrial conference. Based on that representation,

Light did not attend the pretrial conference.

On August 23, 2023, the county court entered a default

against Rodriguez for failing to appear at the pretrial conference.

The court also required LVNV to submit a proposed settlement or

judgment package within thirty days of the default order or face

dismissal. Light alleges that, after receiving the order, he contacted

APLS to ask what had happened. APLS responded that its coverage

counsel had been instructed “to continue pending settlement,” but

that “doesn’t always happen,” and said it would “make sure” the

default was set aside. Relying on that representation, Light did not

move to set aside the default.

On September 5, 2023, Rodriguez executed the settlement

agreement and Light sent it to APLS. The next day, LVNV and

APLS filed a motion for entry of default final judgment. The mo-

tion requested a default final judgment against Rodriguez based on

his failure to appear at the pretrial conference and alleged that Ro-

driguez owed LVNV a principal balance of $1,911.55. The motion

did not reference the settlement, the parties’ agreement for Light

to not attend the pretrial conference, or that coverage counsel

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4 Opinion of the Court 25-12041

made a “mistake” in requesting entry of a default judgment at the

pretrial conference.

After receiving the default-judgment filing, Light again con-

tacted APLS. He asked why the judgment package had been sub-

mitted, why APLS had not moved to set aside the default as prom-

ised, and whether LVNV still intended to countersign the settle-

ment agreement. APLS responded that the default final judgment

“was NOT supposed to be submitted,” that it would “get it with-

drawn,” and that LVNV would countersign the agreement. On

September 12, 2023, APLS sent Light the fully executed settlement

agreement. Later that day, however, the county court entered de-

fault final judgment against Rodriguez.

Light alleges that upon receiving the default final judgment

he became “apoplectic,” lost his appetite, and rushed through his

young son’s bedtime routine. Light alleges that he then spent

“hours” preparing a motion to vacate the default final judgment on

Rodriguez's behalf. Light filed that motion on September 21, 2023.

As acknowledged by Light during oral argument, the county court

later held an evidentiary hearing where it vacated the September

12 default final judgment and set aside the August 23 default.

Light then filed this federal action in his own name. His op-

erative First Amended Complaint asserted claims against LVNV

and APLS under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15

U.S.C. § 1692 (“FDCPA”) and the Florida Consumer Collection

Practices Act, Fla. Stat. § 559.72 (“FCCPA”). Light alleged that

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25-12041 Opinion of the Court 5

LVNV and APLS made false, deceptive, and misleading represen-

tations in connection with their efforts to collect Rodriguez’s debt;

threatened or took actions they could not legally take; engaged in

conduct whose natural consequence was to harass, oppress, or

abuse him; and claimed or attempted to enforce a debt they knew

was not legitimate.

LVNV and APLS moved to dismiss, arguing that Light

lacked statutory standing under the FDCPA and FCCPA because

the alleged debt-collection activity was directed at Rodriguez, not

Light, and that the FCCPA claim was independently barred by

Florida’s litigation privilege. The district court granted the motion

on statutory standing grounds, concluding that Light had not

pleaded the kind of “injurious exposure” to LVNV and APLS’s

debt-collection conduct needed for a non-consumer to maintain a

claim under the FDCPA. 2 Light timely appealed. 3

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

This Court is “under a duty to review its jurisdiction of an

appeal at any point in the appellate process,” Wahl v. McIver, 773

F.2d 1169, 1173 (11th Cir. 1985) (per curiam), and we “review de

novo questions of our jurisdiction.” United States v. Amodeo, 916 F.3d

967, 970 (11th Cir. 2019). A plaintiff must support “each element”

2 Because it found that Light lacked standing under the FDCPA, the district

court dismissed the FCCPA claim on the same basis, declining to reach the

question of whether Florida’s litigation privilege barred the state law claim.

3 Light represented himself, pro se, in both the district court proceedings and

now before us on appeal.

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6 Opinion of the Court 25-12041

of standing with “the manner and degree of evidence required at

the successive stages of the litigation.” Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504

U.S. 555, 561 (1992). Thus, at the motion to dismiss stage, a plain-

tiff must “allege facts that, taken as true, ‘plausibly’ state that the

elements of standing are met.” Hunstein v. Preferred Collection &

Mgmt. Servs., Inc., 48 F.4th 1236, 1241 (11th Cir. 2022) (en banc)

(quotation omitted). “If we lack jurisdiction, our only remaining

function is to announce that we lack jurisdiction and dismiss the

cause.” Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co. v. Barrow, 29 F.4th 1299, 1301 (11th

Cir. 2022).

III. ANALYSIS

Before any federal court may address whether a plaintiff can

assert a claim, the court must first determine whether it has juris-

diction to hear the case at all. “The requirement that jurisdiction

be established as a threshold matter spring[s] from the nature and

limits of the judicial power of the United States and is inflexible and

without exception.” Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env’t, 523 U.S.

83, 94–95 (1998) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. The Con-

stitution limits our authority to actual “Cases” and “Controver-

sies.” U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 1. To ensure that we remain within

our constitutional boundaries, plaintiffs must establish that they

have standing to bring their case. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560; Muransky

v. Godiva Chocolatier, Inc., 979 F.3d 917, 924 (11th Cir. 2020) (en

banc). Standing requires three elements: (1) “the plaintiff must

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25-12041 Opinion of the Court 7

have suffered an injury in fact”; (2) “the injury has to be fairly trace-

able to the challenged action of the defendant”; and (3) “it must be

likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be re-

dressed by a favorable decision.” Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560–61 (altera-

tion adopted) (quotation omitted); see Muransky, 979 F.3d at 924.

Injuries “in fact” must be “concrete and particularized” as

well as “actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.”

Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560 (quotations omitted). “For an injury to be

particularized, it must affect the plaintiff in a personal and individ-

ual way.” Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330, 339 (2016) (quotations

omitted). “[G]eneral interest[s] common to all members of the

public” are not particularized injuries. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 575 (quo-

tation modified). And mere “expression[s] of a desire that the . . .

[l]aw as written be obeyed” do not support an injury-in-fact. Dia-

mond v. Charles, 476 U.S. 54, 66 (1986).

Whether a party has a cause of action under the FDCPA’s

“any person” language is separate from the inquiry of Article III

standing. The question of whether a person has stated a cause of

action to invoke a federal statute goes to the merits, rather than

jurisdiction. Lexmark Int’l, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., 572

U.S. 118, 128 n.4 (2014). Statutory standing “properly asks whether

the plaintiff ‘falls within the class of plaintiffs whom Congress has

authorized to sue’ under the statute -- in other words, whether the

plaintiff ‘has a cause of action under the statute.’” Wiand v. ATC

Brokers Ltd., 96 F.4th 1303, 1313 (11th Cir. 2024) (Marcus, J., con-

curring) (quoting Lexmark, 572 U.S. at 128). And the “absence of a

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valid (as opposed to arguable) cause of action does not implicate

subject-matter jurisdiction, i.e., the court’s statutory or constitu-

tional power to adjudicate the case.” Lexmark, 572 U.S. at 128 n.4

(internal quotation marks omitted). Here, statutory standing and

Article III standing were conflated in the district court’s order. Ar-

ticle III standing, however, comes first and must be addressed be-

fore considering statutory standing. As such, we now turn to ad-

dress Article III standing.

A.

Article III limits federal judicial power to “Cases” and “Con-

troversies.” U.S. Const. art. III, § 2. “Perhaps the most important

of the Article III doctrines grounded in the case-or-controversy re-

quirement is that of standing.” Wooden v. Bd. of Regents of the Univ.

Sys. of Ga., 247 F.3d 1262, 1273 (11th Cir. 2001). “[T]he standing

question is whether the plaintiff has alleged such a personal stake

in the outcome of the controversy as to warrant his invocation of

federal-court jurisdiction and to justify exercise of the court’s reme-

dial powers on his behalf.” Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 498–99

(1975) (emphasis omitted) (quotation marks and citation omitted).

To constitute an injury in fact, a plaintiff’s alleged harm

must be both concrete and particularized, requirements the Su-

preme Court has consistently described as independent of each

other. Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 340 (emphasis added in original) (“We

have made it clear time and time again that an injury in fact must

be both concrete and particularized.”). An injury is concrete if it

“actually exist[s],” and is real, not abstract. Id. at 340. An injury is

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particularized if it “affect[s] the plaintiff in a personal and individual

way.” Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560 n.1. Satisfying one does not satisfy the

other. TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U.S. 413, 425 (2021).

“At the pleading stage of a case, general factual allegations

of injury can suffice [to show an injury]. But that [principle] is not

a free pass—these general factual allegations must plausibly and

clearly allege a concrete injury.” Muransky, 979 F.3d at 924 (citation

and quotation omitted). Consequently, Light must still plausibly

allege that the violation he complains of aggrieves him with a con-

crete and particularized injury that satisfies our standing doctrine.

Intangible injuries can also qualify as concrete where the in-

juries have “a close relationship to a harm that has traditionally

been regarded as providing a basis for a lawsuit in English or Amer-

ican courts.” Id. at 926. Where an element essential to the com-

parator tort is absent, the close-relationship test fails and there is no

concrete injury. Hunstein, 48 F.4th at 1242–43.

B.

Light’s claim rests substantially on the proposition that

LVNV and APLS violated the FDCPA and that the violation itself—

along with the costs he incurred in its aftermath—constitutes a cog-

nizable injury. While we accept for purposes of this analysis that

the violations occurred, that does not establish that Light suffered

an injury in fact. The two inquiries are distinct.

We addressed a similar proposition in the FDCPA context

sitting en banc. In Hunstein, a debt collector transmitted a con-

sumer’s personal debt information to a third-party mail vendor

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hired to generate dunning letters. 48 F.4th at 1240. The consumer

sued, arguing that the transmission to the vendor violated the

FDCPA’s prohibition on disclosing consumer information to unau-

thorized third parties. Id. The statutory violation, if it occurred,

was real: the consumer’s sensitive personal information had been

shared with a company that had no legitimate role in the debt itself.

But we held that the consumer lacked Article III standing because

he had not alleged a concrete harm. Id. at 1245–46. Although the

consumer’s information was transmitted to a third party, because

“no one read[] or perceive[d]” the information, the consumer did

not suffer any real-world injury. Id. at 1247–48. A violation of the

FDCPA, we explained, does not by itself supply the concrete harm

Article III requires: “an injury in law is not an injury in fact.” Id. at

1242 (quoting TransUnion, 594 U.S. at 427).

The Supreme Court has applied that principle in multiple

statutory contexts. A plaintiff does not “automatically satisf[y] the

injury-in-fact requirement whenever a statute grants a person a

statutory right and purports to authorize that person to sue to vin-

dicate that right.” Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 341. “Article III standing re-

quires a concrete injury even in the context of a statutory viola-

tion.” TransUnion, 594 U.S. at 426 (quoting Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 341);

accord Thole v. U.S. Bank N.A., 590 U.S. 538, 545 (2020). Thus, a

technical statutory violation, without more, does not confer stand-

ing. Muransky, 979 F.3d at 930 (“The question, always, is whether

an injury in fact accompanies a statutory violation.”).

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That principle finds additional grounding in the historical

distinction between “private rights” and “public rights.” Common-

law courts historically required a plaintiff asserting a violation of a

public right, one owed to the community at large rather than to

the individual, to demonstrate concrete individual harm beyond

the bare violation itself. Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 345 (Thomas, J., con-

curring). The FDCPA is a public-rights statute: it regulates debt

collectors’ conduct toward the public and authorizes suit to vindi-

cate that public interest in fair collection practices. 15 U.S.C. §§

1692a, 1692k. A plaintiff invoking it must show a concrete harm

particular to himself, not merely a violation directed at someone

with whom he has a professional relationship. Here, Light cannot

make that showing because his injuries are entirely derivative of

harm suffered by his client.

Indeed, the threshold problem with Light’s claim is that

every injury he alleges ultimately traces back to harm that be-

longed to Rodriguez. The default judgment entered in the state-

court debt-collection proceeding was entered against Rodriguez.

The time Light spent was spent remedying the adverse result Ro-

driguez received, and the distress Light experienced arose from his

client’s legal predicament.

For example, Light’s First Amended Complaint alleges that

LVNV and APLS used “false, deceptive and misleading representa-

tions and means in connection with their attempts to collect the debt

from Franklyn Rodriguez.” (emphasis added). Light was not the col-

lection target; he was the attorney representing that target. The

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complaint confirms the derivative structure even more directly.

Light alleges that Appellees knew “the entry of the final judgment

had a high likelihood of causing injury or damage to Franklyn Rodri-

guez and to his attorney GREGORY ANDREW LIGHT.” (empha-

sis added). Rodriguez is primary; Light is secondary and derivative.

Light’s own pleading thus confirms the derivative nature of his in-

juries.

The Supreme Court has recognized that when a plaintiff’s

asserted injury arises from conduct directed at someone else,

“much more is needed” to establish standing. Lujan, 504 U.S. at

562. Downstream consequences of another party’s harm do not

automatically become the plaintiff’s own injury in fact. Id.

Our most recent decision in this area confirms that Light’s

time-and-effort theory does not establish Article III standing. In

Nelson v. Experian Information Solutions, Inc., 144 F.4th 1350 (11th

Cir. 2025), the plaintiff discovered several inaccuracies in the per-

sonal information section of her own credit file. Id. at 1352–53. She

then spent time and money sending certified letters to Experian to

correct those errors. Id. at 1353. But the errors had not been pub-

lished to any third party, had not lowered her credit score, had not

caused a denial of credit, and had not otherwise affected her in any

concrete way. Id. at 1352–54. So, we held that she lacked Article

III standing. Id. at 1355. As we explained, a plaintiff “cannot man-

ufacture standing by spending time and money to rectify an other-

wise harmless statutory violation.” Id.

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The hours Light spent preparing the motion to vacate fall

within the category Nelson forecloses. Nelson, at least, spent time

and money trying to correct information in her own credit file.

Light spent time preparing a motion to vacate a judgment entered

against someone else. The default final judgment (1) imposed liabil-

ity on Rodriguez, (2) required Rodriguez to complete a fact-infor-

mation sheet, and (3) exposed Rodriguez to post-judgment collec-

tion. It did none of those things to Light. Light’s remedial work

was responsive to Rodriguez’s injury, not Light’s. And, unlike the

plaintiff in Nelson, the allegations in the First Amended Complaint

give rise to the plausible conclusion that Light’s own actions con-

tributed to the predicament his client found himself in. If Nelson

could not establish Article III standing by spending her own time

and money to correct errors in her own credit file—errors she did

not contribute to—that had not otherwise affected her, Light can-

not establish standing by spending attorney time correcting a judg-

ment that legally affected only his client and which he at least plau-

sibly played a part in. Nelson, 144 F.4th at 1355; see also Muransky,

979 F.3d at 931 (explaining that “wasted time and effort necessarily

rises or falls” with whether the underlying violation caused a con-

crete harm to the plaintiff) (quotation omitted).

Of all the harms Light alleges, reputational harm is his

strongest, and we address it separately. The Supreme Court has

recognized that reputational injury can constitute a concrete harm

for purposes of Article III standing. TransUnion, 594 U.S. at 432.

The defamation analogue—harm to the plaintiff’s reputation

through the communication of false and damaging information to

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14 Opinion of the Court 25-12041

third parties who perceive it—is well established as a basis for

standing when its elements are present. Id.; Hunstein, 48 F.4th at

1242–43. We therefore take Light’s reputational harm claim seri-

ously. Even so, it fails on its own terms.

The reputational harm Light describes never left the room.

When pressed at oral argument to identify what reputational harm

he actually suffered, Light described an uncomfortable conversa-

tion that he “was forced to have” with Rodriguez about why a de-

fault judgment had been entered against him. That is the crux of

the reputational injury Light points to: an adverse development in

the representation, communicated between attorney and client.

That is not a cognizable reputational injury for two inde-

pendent reasons. First, and most fundamentally, Appellees’ alleged

misrepresentations were not about Light. They concerned Rodri-

guez’s debt and Rodriguez’s obligations in the underlying collec-

tion proceeding. For the defamation analogue to supply concrete

injury, a false statement about the plaintiff must be communicated

to a third party who perceives it. TransUnion, 594 U.S. at 432. But

nothing false or damaging was said about Light at all, to anyone.

Even if Appellees’ representations had been communicated to

every third party imaginable, they would not have constituted rep-

utational harm to Light because they were not about him.

Second, even setting aside the absence of any statement

about Light, no information of any kind about Light reached any

third party in a manner capable of harming his reputation. Hunstein

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establishes that even actual transmission of sensitive consumer in-

formation to a third party is not enough to show reputational harm

unless someone read and perceived it. 48 F.4th at 1240 (“Without

publicity, a disclosure cannot possibly cause the sort of reputational

harm remediated at the common law.”). Light’s situation is even

more attenuated. No information about his professional conduct,

competence, or character was transmitted to anyone. The conver-

sation he identifies with Rodriguez occurred entirely within the at-

torney-client relationship. See id. at 1244 (“[M]isleading infor-

mation—like false information—can lead to unfair reputational

harm if publicized, no reputational harm at all occurs when either

sort of information is kept private.”).

Light does not allege, for example, that he was sanctioned

by the court. He does not allege that he lost clients, lost revenue,

or suffered any measurable harm to his standing in the legal com-

munity.4 The word “reputation” does appear in his complaint, but

there are no details about any third party who received damaging

or false information about Light, nor any professional conse-

quence. Stripped of the conclusory label, what Light calls reputa-

tional harm is indistinguishable from the professional embarrass-

ment that accompanies any representation that does not go

4 True, Light’s law firm has a financial interest in this litigation through its

potential entitlement to attorney’s fees under the FDCPA. But that interest

cannot supply the concrete stake that Light himself lacks. An interest in attor-

ney’s fees is insufficient to create an Article III case or controversy where none

exists on the merits of the underlying claim. Lewis v. Cont’l Bank Corp., 494

U.S. 472, 480 (1990); accord Thole, 590 U.S. at 541–42.

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smoothly. That is not a concrete injury for purposes of Article III

standing. Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 340.

Because we conclude that Light did not state a concrete in-

jury sufficient to establish standing, we need not address whether

the injury is also particularized. See Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560 (holding

that an “injury in fact” must be both concrete and particularized).

IV. CONCLUSION

For the reasons stated, Light has not alleged a concrete in-

jury in fact sufficient to establish Article III standing. We thus dis-

miss this appeal for lack of jurisdiction.

DISMISSED.