Andrew J. Ogilvie

Partner

andy@aoblawyers.com
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Office: 415.651.1952

235 Montgomery St, #914
San Francisco, California 94104

Andrew Ogilvie is a founding member of the law firm and a graduate of Harvard and Wisconsin Law School. His practice focuses on consumer protection litigation, mainly under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. He has represented consumers in many FCRA cases and has handled such cases through the trial courts and on appeal. He currently is handling a number of class actions against credit reporting agencies.

Most of the cases under the FCRA involve consumers who have problems because of inaccuracies in their credit reports. Mixed file cases are one type of inaccuracy violations. The credit bureaus “mix” the information of the consumer with the credit information of someone else. Sometimes there are similarities in names (a “Jr” vs “Sr” situation) but often there is no obvious similarity at all. Mixed file cases are common; one industry expert estimated recently that there are more than 2 million mixed files in the database of a single credit bureau. Mr Ogilvie has helped numerous people in getting their mixed file problems fixed and obtaining appropriate compensation, which can be substantial.

Identity theft cases are another version of inaccuracy cases. Mr. Ogilvie has handled a number of these cases and can guide the consumer to get the problems resolved and to obtaining full compensation.

OFAC cases are another example of inaccuracy cases. The U.S. Treasury Department has a list of suspected terrorists, drug dealers and money launderers. That list is called the OFAC list. US businesses are prohibited from extending credit to anyone on the OFAC list. Credit bureaus offer their subscribers an “OFAC alert” service that is supposed to issue an OFAC alert if that consumer’s name matches a name on OFAC. The problem is that the credit bureaus are often, if not always, issuing OFAC alerts on consumers who are not in fact on the OFAC list.

Another type of FCRA case involves the protection of consumer privacy. A business is not allowed to pull a consumer’s credit report unless that business has a permissible purpose to obtain the information. Mr Ogilvie handled an important case involving the permissible purpose limitations of the FCRA, Pintos v Pacific Creditors, __ F.3d.__ (9th Cir. 2010) and has several pending cases that involve related issues.