Yesterday the District of New Jersey issued an important decision that reinforces—as we have explained before both here and elsewhere—that a plaintiff’s alleged revocation of consent must be reasonable rather than fanciful. Viggiano v. Kohl’s Department Stores, Inc., No. 17-0243 (D.N.J. Nov. 27, 2017).
Continue reading “Yet Another Court Rejects Yet Another Contrived Revocation of Consent Claim”
As we previously reported, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary recently held a hearing entitled “The Impact of Lawsuit Abuse on American Small Businesses and Job Creators.” Although the TCPA was not the sole focus of the hearing, concerns about abusive lawsuits are highly applicable in the TCPA context.
Continue reading “Senate Judiciary Holds Hearing on Abusive Lawsuits”
Following the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Bais Yaakov of Spring Valley v. FCC, 852 F.3d 1078 (D.C. Cir. Mar. 31, 2017), we explained on this blog and elsewhere that the issue of whether a fax advertisement is solicited or not would come back into play in many cases and make it much harder for the plaintiffs’ bar to certify a class of recipients. And that is precisely what occurred in a recent decision from the Northern District of Illinois in Alpha Tech Pet, Inc. v. LaGasse, LLC, No. 16-cv-513 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 3, 2017): the court granted defendants’ motion to deny class certification. In the process, the court also slammed the door on several arguments proffered by plaintiffs’ counsel in an effort to evade the impact of Bais Yaakov.
A recent ruling from the Eastern District of Missouri provides encouraging news for app developers who may be sued under the TCPA for messages sent by users of their app. The court declined to exercise personal jurisdiction over the defendant, the photo sharing app developer Everalbum, Inc., because the text messages sent to plaintiffs in the forum state were sent by users of the app, and Everalbum itself directed no messages into the forum. See Figueroa v. Everalbum, Inc., No. 17-1393, 2017 WL 4574797 (E.D. Mo. Oct. 12, 2017). The decision is a favorable one for software companies whose users may initiate SMS communications with persons throughout the country, thus implicating the TCPA.
On Wednesday the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing that will include testimony about the TCPA’s abuse by plaintiffs and effect on small businesses. Continue reading “Senate to Hold Hearing on Impact of TCPA Litigation on Small Businesses”
Multiple district courts have recently examined whether, and in what circumstances, providing one’s phone number suffices to establish consent to be called under the TCPA. The issue is complicated, turning on whether prior express consent must be in writing, a determination which, in turn, requires examination of whether the call in question constitutes “telemarketing” or “advertising.”
Continue reading “District Courts Debate Whether Providing a Phone Number Establishes Consent”