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United States Court of Appeals.
Fifth Circuit.
No. 96-30737.
Daniel GARRETT, Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
Richard S. DERBES, A Professional Law Corporation; Richard S.
Derbes, Attorney at Law, Defendants-Appellees.
April 23, 1997.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle
District of Louisiana.
Before EMILIO M. GARZA, PARKER and DENNIS, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
In early April 1993, Bell South Mobility retained the law firm
of Richard S. Derbes, A Professional Law Corporation, to collect
delinquent telephone bills from certain customers. Over the next
nine months, Richard S. Derbes, on behalf of the law firm, mailed
approximately 639 demand letters to individual customers of Bell
South. Daniel Garrett received one of these demand letters and
then filed an action against Derbes and his law firm (jointly,
"Derbes") alleging several violations of the Fair Debt Collection
Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1692 et seq.
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act prohibits a "debt
collector" from making false or misleading representations and from
engaging in various abusive and unfair practices. Heintz v.
Jenkins, 514 U.S. 291, ----, 115 S.Ct. 1489, 1490, 131 L.Ed.2d 395
(1995). The act defines a "debt collector" as "any person who uses
any instrumentality of interstate commerce or the mails in any
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business the principal purpose of which is the collection of any
debts, or who regularly collects or attempts to collect, directly
or indirectly, debts owed or due or asserted to be owed or due
another." 15 U.S.C. § 1692a(6).
The district court first determined that the "principal
purpose" of Derbes' law practice was not the collection of debts.
It then determined that Derbes did not "regularly" attempt to
collect debts owed another because (1) Derbes' work for Bell South
constituted less than 0.5 percent of his entire practice during the
nine-month period his law firm represented Bell South, (2) there
was no ongoing relationship between Derbes and Bell South, and (3)
Derbes had not represented Bell South in other matters. On this
ground, the district court granted Derbes summary judgment and
dismissed Garrett's complaint with prejudice. Our review of a
grant of summary judgment is de novo. Fairley v. Turan-Foley
Imports, Inc., 65 F.3d 475, 479 (5th Cir.1995). Moreover, when the
relevant facts are undisputed, as here, the applicability of a
statute's terms is a question of law for the court to decide.
Coffman v. Trickey, 884 F.2d 1057, 1061 (8th Cir.1989), cert.
denied, 494 U.S. 1056, 110 S.Ct. 1523, 108 L.Ed.2d 763 (1990).
Clearly, Congress must have intended the "principal purpose"
prong of § 1692a(6) to differ from the "regularly" prong. See
Jarecki v. Searle & Co., 367 U.S. 303, 307-08, 81 S.Ct. 1579, 1582,
6 L.Ed.2d 859 (1961) (noting that we may not adopt a forced reading
of a statute that renders one part a mere redundancy). Thus, a
person may regularly render debt collection services, even if these
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services are not a principal purpose of his business. Indeed, if
the volume of a person's debt collection services is great enough,
it is irrelevant that these services only amount to a small
fraction of his total business activity; the person still renders
them "regularly." Stojanovski v. Strobl and Manoogian, P.C., 783
F.Supp. 319, 322 (E.D.Mich.1992).
Therefore, we hold that a person who, during a single
nine-month period, attempts to collect debts owed another by 639
different individuals "regularly" attempts to collect debts owed
another, and thus is a "debt collector" under § 1692a(6).
REVERSED AND REMANDED for proceedings consistent with this
opinion.

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