For years, the plaintiffs’ bar has crammed thousands of non-forum class members into a single action in order to more easily justify broader discovery requests, and to more quickly aggregate statutory damages. And many defendants and courts simply assumed that plaintiffs could do so. But that assumption was called into question by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California, a mass tort case in which the Supreme Court held that federal courts do not have specific personal jurisdiction over the nonresidents’ claims merely because resident plaintiffs “allegedly sustained the same injuries as did the nonresidents.” Continue reading “Federal Courts Continue to Split Over Whether They Have Personal Jurisdiction Over Claims Brought By Non-Forum Class Members Against Non-Forum Defendants”
Michael Daly
Articles by Michael Daly:
Inadmissible Hearsay Will Not Create Genuine Issue of Fact Regarding Whether Plaintiff Revoked Consent
The Southern District of Texas recently entered summary judgment in favor of a TCPA defendant, holding that the plaintiff had failed to present competent proof that she had orally revoked her consent to be called by a collection agency. Young v. Medicredit Inc., No. 17-3701, 2019 WL 1923457, at *4 (S.D. Tex. Apr. 26, 2019). Continue reading “Inadmissible Hearsay Will Not Create Genuine Issue of Fact Regarding Whether Plaintiff Revoked Consent”
Class Certification Fails Due to Individualized Issues of Consent
The Northern District of California recently denied a plaintiff’s motion for class certification after finding there was no “common method of proof” to determine which members of the class consented to Defendant’s calls. Revitch v. Citibank, N.A., No C 17-06907 WHA, 2019 WL 1903247 at *4 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 28, 2019). This decision is yet another example of how individualized issues of consent can defeat a plaintiff’s predominance requirement under Rule 23(b)(3). Continue reading “Class Certification Fails Due to Individualized Issues of Consent”
FTC’s Decision Treating Soundboard Calls as Robocalls Remains Undisturbed. What Comes Next?
A two-year legal battle in the federal courts has come to an end, the Supreme Court announced last week. On April 15, 2019, it declined to review the Soundboard Association’s challenge to the legality of a Federal Trade Commission decision in 2016 that outbound telemarketing calls made through soundboard technology are robocalls.
Soundboard technology allows call center agents to interact and converse with consumers on a real-time basis using a combination of audio clips and the agent’s own voice. It may involve reading a pre-determined script, responding to queries and interjections from consumers by playing a pre-recorded audio clip, using “response keys” to generate common interactive conversational responses (such as “I understand,” “exactly,” “yeah,” or a recorded statement that the agent is a real person using audio clips to communicate with the consumer), or giving the consumer the option to speak with a live operator’s own voice for the duration of the call. It has been widely used by call centers in the last two decades. Continue reading “FTC’s Decision Treating Soundboard Calls as Robocalls Remains Undisturbed. What Comes Next?”
Court Holds that Pre-Suit Offer Did Not Moot Claims
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida recently held that a defendant’s pre-suit proffer of a settlement check and a letter promising not to violate the TCPA in the future did not moot the plaintiff’s claims because the plaintiff did not accept the offer. Edelsberg v. Brea Fin. Gp., LLC, No. 18-cv-62119, 2019 WL 1302828 (S.D. Fla. Eb. 26, 2019). The case highlights the ongoing litigation regarding Article III standing in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, 136 S. Ct. 663 (2016). Continue reading “Court Holds that Pre-Suit Offer Did Not Moot Claims”
Mike Daly and Mark D. Taticchi quoted in Law360 article “TCPA ‘Merely A Pawn’ In High Court Deference Fight.”
On March 25, 2019, PDR Network and Carlton & Harris Chiropractic appeared in front of the Supreme Court to present oral arguments discussing the issue of whether the Hobbs Act requires federal courts to accept without question the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) numerous orders interpreting the TCPA.
Southern District of Indiana Rules that Property Manager is Subject to Personal Jurisdiction Based on Text Messages Sent to the Forum State
The Southern District of Indiana recently held that it had personal jurisdiction over a company that had sent text messages marketing its Ohio properties to students in Indiana. Weiss v. Grand Campus Living, Inc., No. 18-0434, 2019 WL 1206167 (S.D. Ind. Mar. 14, 2019).
Court Dismisses TCPA Claim, Finds Plaintiff’s Arguments Waived
The Central District of California recently dismissed claims arising from allegedly unsolicited calls using an ATDS, finding that the plaintiff had waived her arguments by failing to address the defendant’s arguments in her response to the defendant’s motion to dismiss. See Hollis v. LVNV Funding, No. 18-1866, 2019 WL 1091336 (C.D. Cal. Jan. 2, 2019). The court found the dismissal justifiable given the plaintiff’s failure to plead her claim with specificity and her failure to cite to the specific portion of the TCPA that she believed had been violated. Id. at *5.
Continue reading “Court Dismisses TCPA Claim, Finds Plaintiff’s Arguments Waived”
Conflicting Opinions Regarding the Validity of the FCC’s Pre-2015 ATDS Rulings
As our regular readers know, one of the central issues in the ACA International case was whether the FCC’s vague and expansive definition of an ATDS would withstand judicial scrutiny. The D.C. Circuit found that it did not. As we explained at the time, ACA International explicitly set aside the portion of the FCC’s July 2015 Order that pertained to the definition of an ATDS, and by doing so also implicitly set aside the FCC’s prior statements on this subject in prior orders. Continue reading “Conflicting Opinions Regarding the Validity of the FCC’s Pre-2015 ATDS Rulings”
Court Denies Class Certification in Favor of Fitness Club: Plaintiff Failed to Show Commonality in Her Claim Theory and Applicable Consumer Contracts
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida recently issued two opinions in one case—Powell v. YouFit Health Clubs, LLC—that highlight the hurdles that plaintiffs can face in demonstrating typicality, ascertainability, and predominance when TCPA claims purportedly arise from consumer contracts.
In Powell v. YouFit Health Clubs, LLC, No. 17-62328, 2019 WL 926131 (S.D. Fla. Jan. 14, 2019), Traci Powell alleged that YouFit Health Clubs had violated the TCPA by sending “dual purpose text messages.” Plaintiff claimed that she was a former member of YouFit and that, after she cancelled her membership and paid her outstanding balance, she received two text messages that stated, in relevant part, “YOUFIT BALANCE FORGIVENESS: Get 1 year for $99 . . . to clear your past due balance.” She claimed that the texts had falsely stated that consumers had balances due on their accounts and had been sent without their consent. Continue reading “Court Denies Class Certification in Favor of Fitness Club: Plaintiff Failed to Show Commonality in Her Claim Theory and Applicable Consumer Contracts”