Category Archives: Rule 8

District Courts Find ATDS Allegations Implausible Following Facebook

November 22, 2021
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Automatic Telephone Dialing System, Rule 8

Courts in the Southern District of California and District of Arizona recently added to the line of decisions addressing ATDS pleading requirements in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Facebook v. Duguid.  Declining to infer that targeted text messages warranted an inference that the sender used an ATDS, the courts in Wilson v. rater8, LLC, et al., No. 20-cv-1515, 2021 WL 4865930 (S.D. Cal. Oct. 18, 2021), and DeClements v. Americana Holdings LLC, No. CV-20-00166-PHX-DLR, 2021 WL 5138279 (D. Ariz. Nov. 4, 2021), dismissed plaintiffs’ complaints for failure to sufficiently allege the use of an ATDS.

In Wilson v. rater8, the plaintiff filed a class action alleging that defendants violated the TCPA by sending him, after a medical examination, a text asking him to provide feedback regarding his examining physician.  2021 WL 4865930.  The plaintiff alleged that the text was sent using an ATDS.  The court granted defendants’ motion to stay pending the outcome of the Supreme Court’s decision in Facebook.  Following that ruling, defendants moved to dismiss, arguing that plaintiff did not allege sufficient facts to support the claim that an ATDS was used.

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Court Finds that Debt Collection Makes Use Of Random or Sequential Number Generation Implausible

August 28, 2020
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Automatic Telephone Dialing System, Debt Collection, Rule 8

In a victory for debt collectors, the Central District of Illinois recently found that a plaintiff’s bare-bones allegations regarding use of an ATDS were particularly implausible because “the business of the defendant is such that it would not need a machine with random or sequential number generation capacities.” Mosley v. Gen. Revenue Corp., No. 20-01012, 2020 WL 4060767, at *3 (C.D. Ill. July 20, 2020).

In Mosley v. General Revenue Corp., the plaintiff alleged that a debt collection company used an ATDS and prerecorded messages to call her cellular telephone without her consent. Id. at *1. She claimed the calls concerned debts that were not hers, and some calls started with short pauses and “dead air.” Id.

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Alleged Oversight and Monitoring of a Messaging Campaign Deemed Inadequate to Establish Agency

July 20, 2020
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Rule 8, Vicarious Liability

Another court decision reminds us that conclusory allegations that an agency relationship exists should not be sufficient to impute TCPA liability on the alleged beneficiary of a messaging campaign. Pleadings that lack plausible allegations showing “some degree of control over who sent the text and the manner and means by which it was sent” can lead to dismissal – with prejudice, if the plaintiff has run out of a reasonable number of opportunities to amend.

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Parroting the Elements of the Statute—Without Pleading Any Substantive Facts—Isn’t Good Enough Under Rule 8 for the District of Connecticut

May 14, 2020
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Rule 8

The United States District Court for the District of Connecticut recently granted a Defendant’s motion to dismiss Plaintiffs’ TCPA claims because Plaintiffs failed to adequately allege facts supporting an inference that Defendant (1) used an automatic telephone dialing system (“ATDS”) and (2) failed to maintain an internal do-not-call list. Sterling v. Securus Technologies, Inc., 2020 WL 2198095 (D. Conn. May 6, 2020). Plaintiffs originally sued multiple Defendants for negligent and willful violations of the TCPA. Id. at *1. Defendants removed the case to federal court and filed motions to dismiss the original Complaint. Id. Plaintiff amended, and Defendants again moved to dismiss. Id. The Court dismissed all claims against Defendants. Id. The Court then granted Plaintiffs’ motion for leave to file a Second Amended Complaint. Id. at *2. Plaintiffs’ Second Amended Complaint only named Defendant Securus, and Defendant again moved to dismiss. Id.

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District of Massachusetts Grants Dismissal of Threadbare ATDS Claims

March 31, 2020
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Automatic Telephone Dialing System, Do-Not-Call Rules, Rule 8, Telemarketing, Text Messages

The U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts recently granted a TCPA defendant’s motion to dismiss, in part, because the plaintiff failed to allege plausible facts supporting an assertion that the defendant, QuoteWizard, used an ATDS to send two text messages to his phone. Mantha v. QuoteWizard.com, LLC, No. 19-cv-12235, 2020 WL 1274178 (D. Mass. Mar. 16, 2020). The case highlights an important point, namely that defendants can still prevail on ATDS-related claims at the motion to dismiss stage, even despite a recent decision from the jurisdiction applying the expansive definition of an ATDS from the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC, 904 F.3d 1041, 1043 (9th Cir. 2018). See, e.g., Gonzalez v. HOSPO Corp., 371 F. Supp. 3d 26, 34 (D. Mass. 2019) (applying the Marks definition of an ATDS).

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Florida Federal Court Rejects ATDS Allegations, Grants Motion to Dismiss

October 22, 2019
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Automatic Telephone Dialing System, Rule 8, Text Messages

In a text message case, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida recently granted Atlantic Coast Enterprise, LLC’s (“Ace”) motion to dismiss upon finding that the plaintiff had failed to plausibly allege Ace’s use of an automatic telephone dialing system (“ATDS”). See Turizo v. Jiffy Lube International, Inc., et al., No. 19-61140, 2019 WL 4737696 (S.D. Fla. Sept. 27, 2019) (available here).

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From the Four Corners of the Pleading: Plaintiffs Cannot Rely On Factual Allegations Outside the Pleadings To Defeat a Motion to Dismiss

October 4, 2019
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Automatic Telephone Dialing System, Rule 8

The Northern District of Texas recently dismissed a TCPA claim because “the Complaint nowhere alleges that he was called or texted using an ATDS.” The Court’s opinion emphasized that simply asserting that “the text messages were ‘automated’” was not sufficient to state a TCPA claim, and that plaintiffs cannot casually add new factual allegations in their oppositions to a motion to dismiss.

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N.D. Ohio Court Dismisses TCPA Claim, Finding Insufficient Allegations Regarding Consent

August 15, 2019
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Consent, Rule 8

The Northern District of Ohio recently granted a motion to dismiss a TCPA claim because the plaintiff failed to allege plausibly that he had not consented to receive the calls.  Whiteacre v. Nations Lending Corp., et al., No. 19-CV-809, 2019 WL 3477262 (N.D. Ohio Jul. 31, 2019).  The decision reinforces the requirement that to plead a TCPA claim, the plaintiff cannot rely on conclusory allegations that he never consented (or revoked any consent that was previously provided).  To state a plausible claim, the complaint must provide factual allegations, not mere labels or legal conclusions.

Plaintiff alleged that defendants Nations Lending Corporation and its alleged loan servicer, LoanCare, violated the TCPA when LoanCare called him through an automated voice messaging system.  Id. at *2.  The Plaintiff alleged that he “expressed his lack of consent to automated calls,” but the court noted that “Plaintiff does not describe how he ‘expressed his lack of consent,’ nor does he give any other details about the prerecorded calls.”  Id. at *3 (emphasis added).  Defendants moved to dismiss the TCPA claim, arguing that Plaintiff’s conclusory allegations failed as a matter of law.

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Northern District of Illinois Finds Plaintiff Failed to Adequately Allege Use of an ATDS

June 20, 2019
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Automatic Telephone Dialing System, Rule 8

In a recent Northern District of Illinois case, a plaintiff’s TCPA claim was dismissed after the court found that the complaint did not contain sufficient facts to plausibly allege the defendant had used an ATDS. See Bader v. Navient Solutions, LLC, No. 18-1367, 2019 WL 2491537 (N.D. Ill. June 14, 2019). This is yet another example of a case in which a plaintiff failed to plead the use of an ATDS under post-ACA International v. Federal Communications Commission, 885 F.3d 687, 693 (D.C. Cir. 2018) standards. Continue reading   »

Court Dismisses TCPA Claim, Finds Plaintiff’s Arguments Waived

March 26, 2019
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Rule 8

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.

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