Faegre Drinker
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Articles by Faegre Drinker:
The House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing entitled “Legislating to Stop the Onslaught of Annoying Robocalls” on April 30, 2019, that focused on seven bills pending before the Committee. While lawmakers and witnesses generally agreed that illegal and abusive robocalls are a problem, the fix or immediate solution in the form of new legislation was less clear.
Chairman Mike Doyle (D-PA) opened the hearing by summarizing the current state of pervasive robocalls and calling for voice service providers to make available call-blocking services to all customers free of charge. Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) shared this sentiment, emphasizing the need for a bipartisan solution with wide support. As Walden observed, robocalling is a topic that comes up at every single town hall meeting held in recent months. Several bill sponsors made opening statements regarding their respective bills, which we summarize briefly below. Continue reading “Seven Robocall-Related Bills Examined at the House Energy and Commerce Committee Hearing”
The Eastern District of Pennsylvania recently denied a motion to dismiss a TCPA claim, finding that the plaintiff had standing, that the court had jurisdiction, and that the plaintiff had adequately alleged that an ATDS had been used to place the call at issue. See Shelton v. Nat’l Gas & Elec., LLC, No. 17-4063, 2019 WL 1506378 (E.D. Pa. Apr. 5, 2019). Continue reading “Eastern District of Pennsylvania Denies a Motion to Dismiss Claim Based on Alleged Use of an ATDS”
A pair of new cases, one from Alabama and the other from Florida, has doubled down on the conclusion that plaintiffs cannot rely on the Report and Order adopted by the FCC on August 11, 2016 (the “August 2016 Order”) in asserting their TCPA claims, especially when the subject of the calls is debt owed to or guaranteed by the United States government.
Continue reading “Defendant Debunks Plaintiffs’ Reliance On FCC Order That Never Became Effective”
Yesterday, the FCC’s adopted Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”) to amend its Truth in Caller ID Rules was published in the Federal Register, triggering the commenting period deadlines. We previously compared the adopted NPRM with the draft document here and provided an overview of the proposed key provisions here. Comments on this NPRM are due by Wednesday, April 3, 2019, and reply comments are due by Friday, May 3, 2019. Commenters should follow the filing instructions provided in paragraph 40 of the NPRM. Drinker Biddle’s TCPA team will continue to monitor this docket and related developments as they become available.
TCPA Blog contributors Mike Daly, Matt Fedor and Andy Van Houter authored “An Important Class Issue the High Court Left Unresolved” for Law360.
In its ruling in Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, the Supreme Court found that an unaccepted offer of judgment made under Federal Rule 68 does not moot a plaintiff’s claim. But the Court expressly left open the possibility that actually tendering funds to an individual plaintiff could moot the claims. Two circuit courts, however, have recently found that a tender cannot moot the claims, with rulings in Fulton Dental LLC. v. Bisco Inc. and Radha Geismann, M.D. PC v. ZocDoc Inc. Continue reading “An Important Class Issue the High Court Left Unresolved”
On February 14, 2019, the FCC’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau released its first report on illegal robocalls (“the Robocall Report”) to address the “onslaught of unwanted calls that has led a lot of consumers to stop answering the phone altogether.” This report is compiled based on data points from more than forty comments submitted by voice service providers, trade associations, analytics companies, and consumers. The Robocall Report provided summary analysis on the following issues:
Continue reading “FCC First Report on Illegal Robocalls”
Since Chairman Ajit Pai took office, combatting illegal robocalls and malicious spoofing has become the FCC’s top consumer protection priority. In anticipation of yesterday’s Open Commission Meeting, Chairman Pai issued another press release on Wednesday, calling for “a robust caller authentication system to combat illegal caller ID spoofing” and criticizing carriers that lacked commitment to deploy the SHAKEN/STIR framework by the end of 2019. Between Chairman Pai’s 2018 demands that the FCC make real progress in call authentication and yesterday’s Open Meeting to vote on its draft Proposed Rulemaking to amend existing Truth in Caller ID Rules, Chairman Pai solicited details from several large telecommunications carriers about their caller ID authentication plans. These carriers’ submissions are available here.
Continue reading “FCC Adopted Proposed Amendment to Truth in Caller ID Rules”
The FCC’s TCPA dockets can be among the agency’s most active, with intermittent waves of petitions filed, followed by releases of public notices seeking comments on petitions for declaratory rulings or clarifications of FCC rules. It can be difficult to track down TCPA items in the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System. But fear not: the Drinker Biddle TCPA team has put together this tracker chart to help our readers locate pending TCPA petitions and associated public notices. The chart is organized by issue and contains brief summaries of the requests made by petitioners. It does not include petitions for reconsideration of the FCC’s July 2015 omnibus order.
Continue reading “Pending TCPA Petitions”
Last week, the Eastern District of North Carolina denied a TCPA defendant’s personal jurisdiction challenge, finding unpersuasive its argument that it did not purposefully avail itself of the protections of North Carolina law because it did not intentionally make phone calls to Plaintiff in North Carolina. See Hicks v. Houston Baptist Univ., No. 5:17-CV-629-FL, 2019 WL 96219, at *4–5 (E.D.N.C. Jan. 3, 2019). Continue reading “North Carolina District Court Rules that University Is Subject to Personal Jurisdiction, Rejecting Argument That It Did Not Intentionally Place Calls to North Carolina Resident”
The FCC has announced its intention to take another step in combatting fraudulent robocalls by amending its Truth in Caller ID rules to extend to communications originating from outside the United States, as well as expanding the scope of covered communications services to include text messages and additional voice services. Specifically, in anticipation of its scheduled January 30, 2019 Open Meeting, the FCC, just prior to its shutdown on January 3, 2019, released a draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which would implement new FCC rules and definitions designed to deter malicious caller identification spoofing. The proposed rules are intended to update current FCC Truth in Caller ID rules to reflect Congress’ recent enactment of Section 503 of the RAY BAUM’S Act that modified section 227(e) of the Communications Act as well as to “expand and clarify the prohibition on misleading or inaccurate caller identification information.” Continue reading “FCC Proposes to Amend Truth in Caller ID Rules at its January Open Meeting”
