A federal court in Washington recently dismissed TCPA claims against two insurance companies where the plaintiff failed to plausibly allege their vicarious liability. See Sundstrom v. Ocean Reef Media LLC, No. 26-5036, 2026 WL 1361646 (W.D. Wash. May 15, 2026). The decision reinforces the principle that allegations of vicarious liability require facts showing a plausible agency relationship, rather than speculative inferences.
The plaintiff alleged that she received 70 unsolicited text messages from various telemarketers, which solicited insurance services for the two insurance company defendants. The plaintiff, whose phone number was on the national Do Not Call registry, brought individual and class claims against the telemarketers and two insurance companies. The parties conceded that neither insurance company actually sent the text messages at issue, which left the plaintiff with only a theory of vicarious liability. The plaintiff claimed that the insurers and telemarketers had a principal-agent relationship, based on a theory of apparent authority. The two insurers moved to dismiss, arguing that the plaintiff had failed to allege that the telemarketers were acting as their agents.
The court agreed and dismissed the TCPA claims with leave to amend. Ultimately, the court found that the plaintiff failed to allege sufficient facts to establish apparent authority between the insurers and the telemarketer defendants. As the court observed, apparent authority requires a party to reasonably believe in the agent’s authority, but it also requires that belief to be “traceable to the principal’s manifestations,” rather than the agent’s claims. Accordingly, the court rejected the argument that apparent authority could be established from the two insurers’ logos that were on the telemarketers’ websites. The court found that this merely reflected the agent’s claim of authority — not any manifestation by the principal — as there were no allegations that the insurance companies had authorized the use of their names and logos.
Further, the court rejected the plaintiff’s temporal proximity argument, which was based on the fact that the telemarketers (1) switched phone numbers after the plaintiff initially made a do-not-call request to the two insurers, and (2) ceased sending text messages after the plaintiff made a second do-not-call request to the insurance companies. The court called this argument “entirely speculative.”
Sundstrom has important implications for defendants facing claims of vicarious liability under the TCPA. The decision reinforces the principle that pleading vicarious liability requires more than speculative inferences; a plaintiff must assert plausible, factual allegations of an agency relationship. Specifically, a plaintiff cannot establish agency based solely on the alleged agent’s representations (such as displaying a company’s logo), without further alleging that the alleged principal authorized that use. And conclusory allegations about the sequence or timing of events, without more, will not suffice under federal pleading standards.
