New Court Of Appeal Rulings Find Actual Damages Not Required To Litigate Consumer Reporting Violations In California

The saying “No Harm, No Foul” is no longer applicable in California. Two recent published California Court of Appeal decisions hold that plaintiffs do not need to plead or prove actual damages to sue for violations of the Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act (ICRAA), so a bare statutory violation is enough to get into state court and to seek the statute’s $10,000 minimum per‑violation award.

The new ICRAA decisions

• In Yeh v. Barrington Pacific, LLC (Second District, Div. 3, Jan. 21, 2026), the court reversed summary judgment for a landlord that had admittedly violated ICRAA’s disclosure and authorization requirements in connection with tenant background checks.

• Plaintiffs alleged purely procedural failures (no proper written disclosure, no identification of the agency, no mechanism to request a copy, no disclosure of scope), and they did not claim any denial of housing, inaccuracies, identity theft, or other downstream harm.

The court held that Civil Code section 1786.50(a)(1) creates an alternative remedial scheme: a plaintiff may recover “any actual damages” or, except in class actions, ten thousand dollars, “whichever sum is greater,” and that the $10,000 amount is available even when no actual damages exist. The opinion reads ICRAA as a strict liability statute intended to incentivize private enforcement and overcome what the Legislature viewed as the FCRA’s practical limitations, including the need to prove actual damages.

A companion ruling, Parsonage v. Walmart, likewise concludes that an ICRAA plaintiff need not show “injury beyond a statutory violation” to have standing in California courts, explicitly rejecting the line of authority demanding a separate “concrete injury.” The court emphasizes that by referring to “any” actual damages, the statute assumes some plaintiffs will recover zero actual damages but may still obtain statutory recovery.

Standing and damages theory

Both decisions distinguish earlier California cases that had imported a “no injury, no standing” concept into consumer statutes based on federal Article III reasoning in FCRA cases such as Limon v. Circle K and Muha v. Experian. The courts treat ICRAA differently because:

• ICRAA expressly ties liability to “any failure to comply with any requirement,” and

• its remedial structure offers statutory damages untethered to proven loss.

These opinions align ICRAA with other California consumer‑protection schemes where appellate courts have already said statutory damages are available without proof of actual harm, including the Rosenthal/FDBPA line of authority and other penalty‑style regimes.

Practical impact for reporting users

For employers, landlords, and other users of investigative consumer reports in California, the rulings mean:

• A plaintiff who can show a technical ICRAA violation has standing in state court even if they suffered no monetary loss or traditional injury.

• Each violation carries exposure of at least $10,000 per consumer (outside class actions), plus attorneys’ fees and costs.

• Common “paper” defects in disclosures and authorizations—standalone requirement issues, missing identification of the CRA, incomplete description of the scope, or failure to offer a copy—are now fertile ground for litigation.

At the same time, Yeh underscores that California’s Unfair Competition Law still requires an injury in fact and loss of money or property; the no‑injury rule does not apply to UCL claims, and the court affirmed dismissal of UCL theories premised solely on ICRAA violations.​

How this fits with FCRA and other regimes

These rulings do not change federal Article III standing requirements in federal court or the substantive requirement of injury for individual “damages” claims under the FCRA, which other decisions continue to interpret as requiring a concrete injury for at least some claims. Instead, they confirm that:

• California can recognize broader statutory standing in its own courts for state‑law consumer statutes like ICRAA, even when similar federal claims would stall on standing.

• Defendants may face parallel landscapes: narrow standing and injury thresholds under FCRA in federal court, but expansive statutory‑violation‑only standing (with high minimum awards) under California’s ICRAA in state court.