Background
In November 2019, Wendy Treuthardt purchased a vehicle from Rosen Nissan of Madison, financing the purchase through a loan originated by Connexus Credit Union. A dealership finance manager collected her information, completed a credit application reflecting monthly income of $2,800, had Treuthardt sign it certifying the figures were accurate, and submitted it to Connexus for same-day approval. Treuthardt later testified she had never earned $2,800 per month and did not recall the income discussion, but acknowledged both signatures on the application “could be” hers.
By early 2020, Treuthardt had fallen behind on payments. Connexus sent a right-to-cure notice and agreed to defer two missed payments, but Treuthardt continued to default. In February 2021, Connexus directed agents to take possession of the vehicle. During the repossession, Treuthardt made several verbal statements to the agents, which she characterized as objections. She sued Connexus in March 2021 under the Wisconsin Consumer Act, alleging: (1) improper right-to-cure notice; (2) breach of the peace during the vehicle seizure; and (3) various prohibited debt collection practices under WIS. STAT. § 427.104(1), including charging a possession fee months before the vehicle was actually taken and mailing redemption information to an address she had not used in roughly twenty years.
The circuit court denied Treuthardt’s motion for summary judgment in its entirety, granted partial summary judgment to Connexus dismissing the right-to-cure and certain § 427.104(1) claims, and later dismissed the breach-of-peace claim on summary judgment. A directed verdict during trial eliminated the advance-fee claim, and the jury found for Connexus on the remaining force-placed insurance claim. Treuthardt appealed the pre-trial dismissals.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed all circuit court rulings. On the right-to-cure notice claim, the court held that no genuine issue of material fact existed as to whether Treuthardt made a material false statement on her credit application. Under WIS. STAT. § 425.103(2)(bm), a customer who makes a material false statement in a credit application for a motor vehicle purchase loses the right to cure a subsequent default, relieving the creditor of the obligation to provide the fifteen-day cure notice under § 425.105. Because Treuthardt signed the application certifying income she concededly knew was inflated, the statutory presumption that a signed instrument was signed — WIS. STAT. § 891.25 — applied and was unrebutted. The court rejected her argument that the dealership’s alleged responsibility for inserting the false figure absolved her, reasoning that her certification of known inaccurate income triggered the statute regardless of who initially supplied the figure.
On the breach-of-peace claim, the court applied the standard from Hollibush v. Ford Motor Credit Co., 179 Wis. 2d 799 (Ct. App. 1993), which requires a debtor’s verbal objection to be “unequivocal” — an unambiguous demand that the creditor’s agent not take or stop taking the collateral. The court evaluated the specific statements Treuthardt made to the repossession agents and concluded they did not rise to the level of an unequivocal oral protest sufficient to establish breach of the peace as a matter of law. Because Treuthardt failed to include the video recording of the repossession incident in the appellate record, the court also presumed the video’s contents supported the circuit court’s ruling in Connexus’s favor.
The court declined to address Treuthardt’s challenge to the directed verdict on the advance-fee claims because she raised it for the first time in her reply brief, and similarly found no merit in her remaining § 427.104(1) arguments challenging the circuit court’s summary judgment rulings.
Key Takeaways
- A consumer who signs a credit application certifying the accuracy of its contents — including income information — loses the statutory right to cure under WIS. STAT. § 425.103(2)(bm), even if a third party (such as a dealership employee) may have supplied the false figure, because the consumer’s own certification is the operative act.
- Under Hollibush and WIS. STAT. § 425.206, a verbal objection to repossession must be unequivocal — a clear, unambiguous demand to stop — to constitute a breach of the peace; ambiguous or equivocal statements do not suffice.
- Appellants bear the responsibility to include all relevant evidence in the appellate record; failure to transmit a video central to a disputed claim triggers the presumption that the missing material supports the circuit court’s ruling.
- Arguments raised for the first time in an appellate reply brief will not be considered by the Wisconsin Court of Appeals.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces that lenders in Wisconsin may be insulated from the Consumer Act’s right-to-cure notice requirement whenever a borrower has signed a credit application certifying materially false income information — even where the borrower disputes moral responsibility for the false entry. For consumer attorneys, the case highlights the difficulty of pursuing right-to-cure claims when there is any record evidence that the customer certified application contents. It also underscores the high bar for breach-of-peace claims under Wisconsin’s self-help repossession framework: passive or ambiguous verbal pushback during a repossession will not defeat a creditor’s nonjudicial enforcement rights.
The opinion is unpublished and therefore carries no precedential value under WIS. STAT. RULE 809.23(3), but it offers a useful practical illustration of how Wisconsin courts apply the Hollibush “unequivocal objection” standard at the summary judgment stage and how the § 425.103(2)(bm) material-false-statement exception operates in the vehicle-loan context.