Category Archives: Federal Court

The takeaway

Public-interest record: serious allegations, no adjudicated wrongdoing

Case Participants

What happened

Sara M. Reed alleged that CHDB Law LLP and Charlene Cruz pursued or preserved an HOA-related judgment that Reed characterized as no longer enforceable. The complaint framed the dispute around FDCPA collection conduct, abuse of process, and wrongful-recording theories.

The defendants answered by denying liability. Their answer asserted, among other defenses, bona fide error and a disputed judgment-expiration theory tied to when the ten-year enforcement period began.

The downloaded record then shows a notice of settlement. The fair public conclusion is narrow: Reed documents negative allegations and a settlement, not judicial exoneration and not judicial liability.

Video overview of the case record

AI-generated video overview of Reed v. CHDB Law LLP et al.. This is an allegation-and-settlement record. Defendants denied liability, and no merits ruling appears in the downloaded record.

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AI-generated audio deep dive for Reed v. CHDB Law LLP et al.. This is an allegation-and-settlement record. Defendants denied liability, and no merits ruling appears in the downloaded record.

Use the linked court records and written page for the exact legal posture.

Litigation record

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Primary sources

• Complaint
• Answer
• Notice of settlement

Case Dossier

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Case Summary

Parties, Court, and Research Coverage

Key Issues & Findings

The takeaway

Case Participants

What happened

Shawn Burgueno, a Phoenix-area loan officer, filed an individual Chapter 11 case (No. 2:09-bk-10375-RJH) in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Arizona in 2009. His scheduled assets included his home, a vacant lot, and five single-family residential investment properties; according to his schedules, all of the investment properties were worth less than the debts secured by them. One investment property was a condominium in Scottsdale, subject to assessments by two associations—the Edge at Grayhawk Condominium Association and the Grayhawk Community Association.

In February 2010, Burgueno stipulated with Wells Fargo Bank for relief from the automatic stay so the bank could immediately foreclose on the condominium. The stipulation terminated the § 362 automatic stay as to the bank’s interest in the property and waived the 14-day stay under Bankruptcy Rule 4001(a)(3). The bankruptcy court approved the stipulation on March 8, 2010.

Burgueno’s Chapter 11 plan was confirmed in August 2010. The order confirming the plan expressly incorporated the Wells Fargo stipulation for treatment of the bank’s claim regarding the Scottsdale condominium.

Despite obtaining stay relief, Wells Fargo did not conduct a foreclosure or trustee’s sale of the condominium for more than a year. In the meantime, the two associations continued to bill Burgueno for post-petition assessments, which totaled roughly $8,000 by April 2011.

In April 2011, Burgueno filed motions seeking orders determining that the associations were bound by his confirmed plan and therefore limited to their allowed pre-petition claims. The associations responded that the plan neither did nor could discharge their post-petition assessments so long as Burgueno held legal title, and that neither the stipulated stay relief nor the plan confirmation terminated that title.

On May 26, 2011, Bankruptcy Judge Randolph J. Haines denied the motion. He held the post-petition assessments—and the attorneys’ fees incurred in collecting them—nondischargeable under §§ 523(a)(16) and 1141(d) for as long as Burgueno retained a legal, equitable, or possessory interest in the unit. Because the associations had not requested a money judgment and the dispute was a contested matter rather than an adversary proceeding, the court entered no judgment but denied the debtor’s motion to compel plan compliance.

This published bankruptcy decision is frequently cited for the proposition that an individual debtor’s personal liability for homeowner- and condominium-association assessments does not stop at the bankruptcy filing or at stay relief—it continues, post-petition, for as long as the debtor holds legal title to the unit. For Arizona associations, it confirms that assessments (and the CC&R-based attorneys’ fees for collecting them) keep accruing as nondischargeable obligations until title actually transfers by foreclosure or conveyance, even where the lender has obtained relief from the automatic stay but delays foreclosing. For owners and their counsel, the case is a cautionary lesson about “surrendering” investment property in bankruptcy: giving up possession and consenting to foreclosure does not, by itself, cut off assessment liability. To stop the clock, the debtor generally must affirmatively transfer title—through a court-approved quit-claim deed under § 363(b)(1) or a plan transfer under § 1123(a)(5)(B)—rather than wait for a lender that may take a year or more to foreclose. The decision also underscores that a Chapter 11 plan will not discharge post-petition HOA fees unless it says so expressly and the association fails to object.

Video overview of the case record

AI-generated video overview of In re Shawn Burgueno, Debtor. This is a bankruptcy assessment-liability authority. The written opinion and linked source note control.

The written case page and linked court records are the controlling source for legal posture and accuracy.

Listen: audio deep dive on the case record

AI-generated audio deep dive for In re Shawn Burgueno, Debtor. This is a bankruptcy assessment-liability authority. The written opinion and linked source note control.

Use the linked court records and written page for the exact legal posture.

Litigation record

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Case Summary

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The takeaway

Public-interest record: sanctions against IQ Data and CHDB counsel

Case Participants

What happened

IQ Data International, Inc. acquired a debt obligation stemming from Ryan Six’s purported breach of a residential lease. The dispute that reached the Ninth Circuit was not about whether Six owed the money, but about how IQ, as a debt collector, communicated with him after he retained a lawyer.

On August 18, 2021, Six mailed a letter to Equifax disputing the debt and requesting documentation. The same day, Six’s counsel mailed a letter directly to IQ, giving notice that Six was represented and that all correspondence should be sent to counsel rather than to Six.

On September 2, 2021, IQ received Six’s dispute letter and generated an internal request to produce and send the requested verification documentation to Six’s own mailing address. The next day, September 3, IQ updated its records to reflect that it had processed counsel’s letter and that direct communication with Six should cease — yet on that same day IQ mailed the debt-verification letter directly to Six.

After receiving the letter, Six sued IQ in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona under 15 U.S.C. § 1692c(a)(2), which prohibits a debt collector from communicating directly with a consumer it knows is represented by an attorney. The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment.

The district court (Judge Michael T. Liburdi) dismissed the action for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, ruling that Six lacked Article III standing because he had not shown an injury in fact. The court reasoned that receiving a single unwanted letter was neither akin to a traditionally recognized harm nor the type of abusive practice the FDCPA was designed to prevent, and it denied the remaining summary-judgment arguments as moot.

On de novo review, the Ninth Circuit (Judge Desai, joined by Judges Graber and de Alba) reversed. It held that receipt of a letter sent in violation of § 1692c(a)(2) is a concrete, particularized, and actual injury — an invasion of privacy — sufficient for standing, and it rejected the Seventh Circuit’s contrary Pucillo reasoning as focused on degree rather than kind of harm.

The panel remanded for the district court to address the parties’ summary-judgment arguments in the first instance, expressly leaving open the affirmative defenses and a possible bona fide mistake defense. It noted that the short time between IQ processing counsel’s letter and mailing the disputed letter, together with Six’s own request that information be sent to him, raised serious questions about IQ’s ultimate liability. A separately filed memorandum disposition affirmed the district court’s discovery ruling and its modified attorneys’-fee award.

Six resolves an important standing question for consumer-protection litigation in the Ninth Circuit: a single unwanted written communication sent to a represented consumer can, by itself, be a concrete injury sufficient to sue in federal court. By anchoring the injury in Congress’s privacy findings and the common-law tort of intrusion upon seclusion, and by expressly declining to follow the Seventh Circuit’s mail-versus-text distinction from Pucillo, the panel makes clear that the relevant inquiry is the kind of harm, not its degree or the medium of delivery. That lowers the jurisdictional threshold for FDCPA plaintiffs and creates a circuit split that could draw further review. For Arizona community-association practitioners, the case is notable less for its subject matter — the underlying debt came from a residential lease, not an assessment lien, and no HOA is a party — than for who litigated it. The debt collector was represented on appeal by Carpenter Hazlewood Delgado & Bolen LLP (now CHDB Law), a leading Arizona HOA/community-association firm. Because associations and their managing agents routinely collect delinquent assessments and often qualify as debt collectors, the decision is a practical reminder that once a homeowner is known to be represented by counsel, direct written contact — even a single verification letter — can expose a collector to FDCPA liability and confer standing to sue.

HOA relevance: the defendant was represented by Carpenter Hazlewood Delgado & Bolen, a community-association law firm, and the decision affects FDCPA standing in collection communications.

The downloaded record also includes a July 1, 2026 post-remand summary-judgment order for IQ Data on liability. As of July 8, 2026, that order was recent enough that the appeal window may not have expired, so the page treats the sanctions order and the Ninth Circuit standing holding as fixed source-backed events while avoiding any claim that the entire case is appellate-final.

Litigation record

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Case Dossier

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Key Issues & Findings

The rule in one sentence

Public-interest record: defense win with a consumer-privacy caveat

Case Participants

What happened and why it matters

Janis Wolf bought a home in the Neely Farms subdivision, which was subject to CC&Rs requiring homeowners to pay annual HOA assessments in installments. In 2017 she stopped paying, and the Neely Farms HOA hired Carpenter Hazlewood Delgado & Bolen LLP to collect the unpaid assessments. Before filing a justice-court collection action, the firm obtained Wolf’s credit report without her consent to confirm her current address. Wolf then sued the firm under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), arguing the firm lacked a permissible purpose under 15 U.S.C. § 1681b.

The District of Arizona granted summary judgment to CHDB. Judge Douglas L. Rayes held that the assessment arrangement was a voluntary credit transaction because the annual assessment was payable in installments and Wolf bought the home knowing it was bound by the CC&Rs. The court also found a direct link because the firm pulled the report to locate Wolf for the assessment-collection lawsuit.

The Ninth Circuit affirmed, but on a narrower ground. The panel assumed without deciding that Wolf could show a FCRA violation and held that any violation was not willful because CHDB’s statutory reading was not objectively unreasonable. Judge Christen concurred separately and questioned whether ordinary HOA assessments really fit the credit-transaction concept.

The fair public takeaway is therefore narrow: CHDB won and Wolf is not a liability finding against the firm. At the same time, Wolf should not be presented as blanket appellate approval for HOA collection credit pulls. The appellate court avoided the merits question and left a consumer-privacy caveat in the concurrence.

Step-by-step litigation record

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Case Summary

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Key Issues & Findings

The rule in one sentence

Public-interest record: appellate finding against Maxwell & Morgan

Case Participants

What happened and why it matters

Martha McNair bought a home in Gilbert, Arizona in 2004 that was part of the Neely Commons Community Association, obligating her under a recorded declaration of covenants, conditions, and restrictions (CC&Rs) to pay an annual assessment in monthly installments. After she fell behind, the law firm Maxwell & Morgan P.C. — retained by the Association — pursued her through a series of collection lawsuits, a stipulated judgment, and ultimately a judicial foreclosure that sold her home. McNair then sued the firm and its principals under the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), alleging they misrepresented the amount she owed and sought attorneys’ fees to which they were not entitled. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants, holding most claims time-barred and rejecting the timely claims — reasoning in part that pursuing a foreclosure was not “debt collection” and that the state court had implicitly approved the fees. The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part. Distinguishing Ho v. ReconTrust Co. (a non-judicial foreclosure case), the panel held that collecting HOA assessments through a judicial foreclosure that allows deficiency judgments is “debt collection” subject to the FDCPA. It further held that the firm’s writ of special execution violated 15 U.S.C. § 1692e by falsely representing the legal status of $1,597.50 in “accruing” attorneys’ fees as court-approved when no court had yet approved them. The panel remanded for a determination of statutory and any actual damages, and a concurrently filed memorandum disposition affirmed the remaining, largely untimely claims.

The panel addressed the two independent grounds on which the district court had granted summary judgment. First, the district court had held that the defendants were not engaged in “debt collection” because the writ was filed to foreclose on a lien. The Ninth Circuit rejected that reasoning as irreconcilable with the statutory text. Under 15 U.S.C. § 1692a(5), a “debt” is an obligation to pay money arising out of a transaction primarily for personal, family, or household purposes, and under § 1692a(6) a “debt collector” is anyone who regularly collects debts owed to another. McNair’s obligation arose from unpaid homeowner-association assessments on her residence, so it plainly qualified as consumer debt, and the firm plainly qualified as a debt collector. The court cited Mashiri v. Epsten Grinnell & Howell, 845 F.3d 984 (9th Cir. 2017), and Heintz v. Jenkins, 514 U.S. 291 (1995), for the settled rule that attorneys who regularly engage in consumer-debt collection are covered by the Act even when that activity consists of litigation.

The court then distinguished Ho v. ReconTrust Co., NA, 858 F.3d 568 (9th Cir. 2017), on which the defendants relied. Ho held that a trustee facilitating a non-judicial foreclosure was not collecting a “debt” because, under California law, such a foreclosure cannot yield a deficiency judgment and thus extinguishes the entire debt regardless of the sale price — the object being to retake and resell the security, not to collect money from the borrower. Here, by contrast, the defendants pursued a judicial foreclosure under a scheme that, in many cases, permits deficiency judgments, citing A.R.S. §§ 33-727(A) and 33-729(B)-(C). That difference placed the firm’s conduct squarely within the FDCPA’s definition of debt collection.

Second, the district court had held, in the alternative, that the writ did not violate the Act because the Maricopa County Superior Court had implicitly approved the claimed fees by issuing the writ and later rejecting McNair’s challenges. The panel found this analysis failed to ask the right question: whether the defendants were legally entitled to claim the fees at the time they applied for the writ. The FDCPA bars any false or misleading representation of the character, amount, or legal status of a debt, 15 U.S.C. § 1692e(2)(A). Under Arizona Rule of Civil Procedure 54(g), post-judgment attorneys’ fees must be requested by motion, and when the November 5, 2013 writ was filed, no court had yet approved the quantification of the $1,597.50 in “accruing” fees. By listing those fees as “now … due,” the writ falsely represented that they had already been judicially approved. The court cited Woliansky v. Miller and Costa v. Maxwell & Morgan PC for the point that fee amounts are set by the court’s discretion. Because the district court had not reached damages, the panel remanded for a determination of statutory and, if applicable, actual damages under 15 U.S.C. § 1692k, noting McNair might have suffered no actual damages given the Superior Court’s later approval of the fees.

This published Ninth Circuit decision is significant for homeowners, associations, and the law firms that collect HOA debt because it confirms that the FDCPA applies to judicial-foreclosure collection of delinquent assessments. Many collectors had read Ho v. ReconTrust to mean that any foreclosure is outside the Act. McNair narrows Ho to its facts: the exemption turns on whether the foreclosure scheme can produce a deficiency judgment. Because Arizona’s judicial-foreclosure process can, a firm that collects assessments through it is a “debt collector” pursuing a “debt” and must comply with the FDCPA’s prohibitions on false or misleading representations.

The decision also draws a practical line for how collectors may present attorneys’ fees in enforcement papers. Listing “accruing” fees as presently due in a writ of special execution — before any court has approved that amount under Arizona Rule 54(g) — can be an actionable misrepresentation of the debt’s legal status, even if a court later blesses the same fees. For homeowners, McNair confirms a federal remedy (including statutory damages) against overreaching collection conduct; for associations and their counsel, it is a reminder to secure judicial approval before characterizing post-judgment fees as owed. The Supreme Court denied certiorari in 2019, leaving the ruling in force within the Ninth Circuit.

Video overview of the case record

AI-generated video overview of McNair v. Maxwell & Morgan, PC. The Ninth Circuit appellate holding is the adverse source-backed point; the case settled after remand and no damages judgment should be implied.

The written case page and linked court records are the controlling source for legal posture and accuracy.

Listen: audio deep dive on the case record

AI-generated audio deep dive for McNair v. Maxwell & Morgan, PC. The Ninth Circuit appellate holding is the adverse source-backed point; the case settled after remand and no damages judgment should be implied.

Use the linked court records and written page for the exact legal posture.

Step-by-step litigation record

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Case Dossier

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Case Summary

Parties, Court, and Research Coverage

Key Issues & Findings

The rule in one sentence

Case Participants

What happened and why it matters

Zakia Mashiri owns a home in San Diego and is a member of the Westwood Club homeowners’ association, which levies annual assessments. After she failed to timely pay a $385 assessment fee levied in July 2012, the HOA’s collection law firm, Epsten Grinnell & Howell, and attorney Debora M. Zumwalt sent her a May 1, 2013 letter (the ‘May Notice’) demanding $598 in assessments plus late, administrative, and legal fees, and warning that failure to pay within thirty-five days would result in a lien on her property. The same letter also contained federal debt-validation language telling her she had thirty days to dispute the debt. Mashiri sued under the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), California’s Rosenthal Act, and California’s Unfair Competition Law, alleging the letter’s payment deadline and lien threat overshadowed and contradicted her right to dispute the debt. The district court dismissed all claims under Rule 12(b)(6). The Ninth Circuit reversed. Applying the ‘least sophisticated debtor’ standard, it held Mashiri stated a plausible 15 U.S.C. § 1692g violation because the letter demanded payment within thirty-five days of its date (inconsistent with the thirty-day dispute window running from receipt) and threatened a lien regardless of any dispute. The panel also rejected Epsten’s argument, raised for the first time on appeal, that it was subject only to § 1692f(6); it held Epsten was a debt collector subject to the full scope of the FDCPA. The court reversed and remanded.

Reviewing the Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal de novo, the panel accepted the complaint’s well-pleaded allegations as true and asked whether they stated a claim ‘plausible on its face’ under Ashcroft v. Iqbal and Bell Atlantic v. Twombly. It framed the FDCPA’s purpose as eliminating abusive debt-collection practices and subjecting ‘debt collectors’ to civil liability. The court first addressed Epsten’s threshold argument, raised for the first time on appeal, that because it sought only to perfect a security interest it was governed solely by 15 U.S.C. § 1692f(6). Although arguments raised for the first time on appeal are ordinarily forfeited, the panel reached this one because it was purely legal, the pertinent facts were undisputed, and Mashiri had responded to it. On the merits, the court held the overdue assessment was a ‘debt’ under § 1692a(5) because it arose from Mashiri’s household membership in the HOA, and the May Notice plainly sought to collect it. Relying on Ho v. ReconTrust, the panel reasoned that entities enforcing security interests are debt collectors when their activities constitute debt collection; unlike the trustee in Ho, who merely sent a notice of default without demanding payment, Epsten demanded payment and there was as yet no recorded lien to enforce. Epsten was therefore subject to the full scope of the FDCPA, including § 1692g and § 1692e. Turning to § 1692g, the court explained that a validation notice must be conveyed effectively (Swanson v. Southern Oregon Credit Service) and must not be overshadowed by or inconsistent with other messages that would confuse the least sophisticated debtor (Terran v. Kaplan). The panel found two plausible violations: first, demanding payment within thirty-five days of the letter’s date conflicted with the debtor’s thirty-day dispute period measured from receipt, because a debtor might receive the letter with fewer than thirty days remaining and would have to forgo her dispute rights to avoid a lien; second, the statement that a lien ‘will’ be recorded upon nonpayment overshadowed the right to dispute, because the least sophisticated debtor would wrongly believe a lien would be recorded on the thirty-fifth day even after disputing the debt. The court distinguished Shimek v. Weissman (governed by Georgia law permitting contemporaneous lien filing) and explained that under California’s Davis-Stirling Act (Cal. Civ. Code §§ 5660, 5670) an HOA must give thirty days’ notice and participate in dispute resolution before recording a lien, so the FDCPA duty to suspend collection pending verification was fully consistent with state law. Accordingly, the threat to record a lien was a debt-collection activity that had to cease upon a dispute, and the letter’s failure to convey that effectively stated a plausible § 1692g violation. Reversing the § 1692g dismissal required reversing the dependent § 1692e(5), Rosenthal Act, and Unfair Competition Law claims as well.

For homeowners’ associations and the law firms that collect their assessments, this published Ninth Circuit decision confirms that a single letter can be both a Davis-Stirling pre-lien notice and full-blown FDCPA debt collection. A collector cannot escape § 1692g simply by saying it was ‘perfecting a security interest’ when no lien yet exists and the letter demands payment. Practically, collection letters must give the consumer the full thirty-day dispute window measured from receipt, must not set a payment deadline that effectively shortens that window, and must not threaten that a lien ‘will’ be recorded in a way that suggests the threat survives a timely dispute. Because the FDCPA requires collection to cease once the debtor disputes the debt and until verification is mailed, a lien threat that ignores that pause can overshadow the validation notice and expose the firm to liability.

For Arizona homeowners and boards, the decision carries direct weight even though it arose under California’s Davis-Stirling Act. It is a published, precedential opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which includes Arizona, so it binds Arizona’s federal district courts on the FDCPA questions it decides. Arizona HOAs collect assessments under a different state statutory scheme, but the FDCPA is federal law that applies the same way to Arizona assessment-collection letters. An Arizona homeowner who receives a demand letter from an HOA collection firm has the same right to a clear, unobstructed thirty-day validation notice, and firms operating in Arizona should ensure their letters do not let assessment deadlines or lien warnings overshadow that federal right.

The source set for this page is the 2017 published Ninth Circuit opinion. It does not include a post-remand final disposition, damages award, or settlement record, so the page summarizes the precedential appellate ruling and does not claim a final liability judgment after remand.

Video overview of the case record

AI-generated video overview of Zakia Mashiri v. Epsten Grinnell & Howell; Debora M. Zumwalt; Does 1-25. This is a published appellate precedent guide based on the Ninth Circuit reversal/remand, not a complete post-remand final-disposition record.

The written case page and linked court records are the controlling source for legal posture and accuracy.

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AI-generated audio deep dive for Zakia Mashiri v. Epsten Grinnell & Howell; Debora M. Zumwalt; Does 1-25. This is a published appellate precedent guide based on the Ninth Circuit reversal/remand, not a complete post-remand final-disposition record.

Use the linked court records and written page for the exact legal posture.

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Case Summary

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The rule in one sentence

Public-interest record: disputed CHDB collection-fee evidence

Case Participants

What happened and why it matters

In 2009, Iowa residents Curtis and Lorri Glawe purchased a home in Buckeye, Arizona (the “Mohave Property”) and a second lot in the same subdivision (the “228th Lane Property”). Ownership made them members of the Sundance Residential Homeowners Association, Inc. and bound them to the community’s CC&Rs and assessment obligations. The Glawes never lived in the homes and consistently rented them to tenants. After they fell behind on assessments, the HOA—through its collection law firm, Carpenter, Hazlewood, Delgado & Bolen PLC—twice sued them in Arizona state court for unpaid assessments and late fees and was awarded court costs and attorneys’ fees. Glawe then sued the firm and several of its attorneys in federal court under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). The district court granted summary judgment for the firm, reasoning that because the property was a rental, the assessment obligation was commercial rather than consumer in nature and therefore not a “debt” covered by the FDCPA. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit reversed. It held that the relevant “transaction” was the original 2009 purchase of the property, and that the purpose of that purchase—measured when the obligation was incurred—controls, not the owner’s later rental use. Because an obligation tied to a rental property is not automatically commercial and a genuine factual dispute existed over the Glawes’ purpose in buying the properties, the panel remanded for the district court to determine the true purpose of the acquisition. The decision is an unpublished, non-precedential memorandum.

The panel began with the FDCPA’s threshold limitation: the statute reaches only consumer—as opposed to commercial—debt, citing Bloom v. I.C. Systems, Inc., 972 F.2d 1067, 1068 (9th Cir. 1992). The FDCPA defines “debt” as “any obligation or alleged obligation of a consumer to pay money arising out of a transaction in which the money, property, insurance, or services which are the subject of the transaction are primarily for personal, family, or household purposes.” 15 U.S.C. § 1692a(5). The court read this to require two things: (1) an obligation arising out of a transaction, and (2) that the subject of the transaction be primarily for personal, family, or household purposes.

The dispositive question was how to identify the “transaction.” The appellees urged the court to focus on the assessments and attorneys’ fees incurred after the Glawes bought the home and while it was being used as a rental. The panel rejected that framing. It held that the “transaction” at issue is the purchase of the Mohave Property itself. The Glawes bought the property in 2009 and were, at that moment, subject to the HOA’s CC&Rs, which required them to pay assessments. Because the appellees’ efforts to collect the allegedly late assessments, late fees, court costs, and attorneys’ fees are what produced the FDCPA claim, the underlying obligation “ar[ose] out of” the purchase of the property under a plain reading of the statute.

Having fixed the transaction as the purchase, the court framed the real inquiry as whether that purchase was primarily consumer or commercial in nature, and it emphasized timing: courts “determine the debtor’s purpose as of the time the debt was incurred,” quoting In re Cherrett, 873 F.3d 1060, 1067 (9th Cir. 2017). The district court had erred by concluding categorically that an obligation associated with a rental property cannot be primarily consumer in nature. To decide the purpose question, a court must “examine the transaction as a whole, paying particular attention to the purpose for which the credit was extended,” quoting Slenk v. Transworld Systems, Inc., 236 F.3d 1072, 1075 (9th Cir. 2001). That determination can be made as a matter of law, but a genuine dispute of fact relevant to the inquiry can preclude summary judgment. Here, the Glawes’ affidavits and deposition testimony—that they initially intended to use the home as a future retirement residence and only later decided to rent—created such a dispute. The panel therefore reversed and remanded for the district court to make a factual determination of the true purpose of the Glawes’ acquisition of both the Mohave Property and the 228th Lane Property, using whatever procedures it deemed appropriate. Because the reversal resolved the appeal, the panel did not reach Glawe’s challenges to the denial of his motion to amend or his motion for reconsideration.

For Arizona homeowners and community associations, this memorandum illustrates a recurring dividing line in assessment-collection disputes: whether the FDCPA even applies to an HOA’s efforts to collect unpaid dues. The FDCPA governs only “consumer” debt, and the Ninth Circuit’s analysis makes clear that the character of an HOA assessment obligation is judged by the primary purpose of the original property purchase, measured when the obligation was incurred—not by how the owner later uses the home. An owner who buys a residence for personal or family use does not necessarily lose FDCPA protection simply by later renting it out, and a court cannot treat every rental-property assessment as categorically commercial. That has practical stakes for both sides: if the debt is consumer in nature, the collecting law firm must comply with the FDCPA’s disclosure and conduct rules; if it is commercial, those federal protections do not apply.

The decision also underscores that the consumer-versus-commercial question is fact-intensive and can defeat summary judgment. Owner intent at the time of purchase—documented through affidavits, deposition testimony, and the surrounding circumstances of the acquisition—can create a genuine dispute that a court must resolve on a full record. Because the disposition is unpublished and non-precedential under Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3, it does not bind future panels, but it is a useful window into how the court frames the “transaction” and “primary purpose” elements when HOA assessment debt intersects with federal debt-collection law. This page is educational and neutral; it is not legal advice, and anyone facing an assessment or collection dispute should consult a qualified Arizona attorney about their specific facts.

Video overview of the case record

AI-generated video overview of Glawe v. Carpenter, Hazlewood, Delgado & Bolen PLC. The case settled after remand; fee-ledger material is allegation/exhibit evidence, not a final CHDB liability finding.

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Listen: audio deep dive on the case record

AI-generated audio deep dive for Glawe v. Carpenter, Hazlewood, Delgado & Bolen PLC. The case settled after remand; fee-ledger material is allegation/exhibit evidence, not a final CHDB liability finding.

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Case Dossier

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Case Summary

Parties, Court, and Research Coverage

Key Issues & Findings