TCPA Plaintiff Argues He Wasn’t Injured in Attempt to Dodge Federal Jurisdiction

Usually, it is the plaintiff that argues he or she was injured, not the defendant. But, in an effort to stay in state court, some TCPA plaintiffs have taken the counterintuitive position that they did not suffer an injury in fact under Article III of the U.S. Constitution and, therefore, their claims cannot be heard in federal court.

“[T]o satisfy Article III’s standing requirements, a plaintiff must show (1) it has suffered an ‘injury in fact’ that is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical; (2) the injury is fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant; and (3) it is likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision.” Friends of Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Servs. (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 180–181 (2000).

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FCC Order Causes Confusion Regarding Consent Required for Informational Calls to Residential Landlines

On December 30, 2020, the FCC issued a Report and Order (the December 2020 FCC Order) to implement Section 8 of the Pallone-Thune Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act (TRACED Act). The December 2020 FCC Order contains a critical internal inconsistency that has caused significant confusion regarding the level of consent required for certain prerecorded informational calls to residential landlines. As discussed below, the inconsistency is almost certainly the result of a drafting error.

The relevant terms of the TRACED Act state that the FCC must ensure that any exemptions to Section 227(b)(2)(B) or (C) of the TCPA include specific limits on “the number of such calls that may be made to a particular called party.” Dec. 2020 FCC Order ¶ 2 (citing TRACED Act, Pub. L. No. 116-105, 133 Stat. 3274, § 8 (2019)). The December 2020 FCC Order amends 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(a)(3)(ii)-(iii) to limit the number of calls that a caller can make to a residential landline under the exemption for “informational” calls to three such calls within any thirty-day period.

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Another Court Rejects Threadbare Allegations of So-Called Vicarious Personal Jurisdiction

The District of Arizona recently dismissed Winters v. Grand Caribbean Cruises, Inc., No. 20-0168, 2021 WL 511217 (D. Ariz. Feb. 11, 2021), for lack of personal jurisdiction, finding that the plaintiffs had failed to establish that the caller’s contact with Arizona could be imputed to Grand Caribbean.

The plaintiffs alleged that Grand Caribbean violated the TCPA by using a prerecorded voice to initiate calls to numbers on the Do-Not-Call Registry.  Grand Caribbean moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, among other things.

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Eastern District of Texas Holds that Professional TCPA Litigant Can Face Counterclaims for Fraud

A federal magistrate judge in the Eastern District of Texas recently addressed a question of first impression for the jurisdiction: Can professional plaintiffs who manufacture TCPA claims face counterclaims for fraud brought by the defendant in an abusive lawsuit? According to the magistrate and the district judge that adopted her recommendation, the answer is yes.

In Cunningham v. USA Auto Protection, LLC, the plaintiff—professional litigant Craig Cunningham—alleged that defendant USA Auto Protection (USA Auto) made over twenty telemarketing calls to Cunningham’s cell phone without his consent. Case No. 4:20-cv-142, 2021 WL 434243, at *1 (E.D. Tex. Jan. 8, 2021).

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Two More District Courts Disagree with Creasy

Confusion continues amongst federal district courts in the wake of Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants, Inc. (“AAPC”), 140 S. Ct. 2335 (2020), the Supreme Court decision that held the TCPA’s government-debt exception—instituted via a 2015 amendment to the statute—violated the First Amendment. Courts recently have dealt with the issue of whether plaintiffs can bring TCPA claims for conduct occurring between 2015 and July 2020, the date the unconstitutional amendment was passed and the date the Supreme Court declared the amendment unconstitutional and ordered it severed from the TCPA. The Eastern District of Louisiana said the answer to this question is no. Creasy v. Charter Communications, Inc., 2020 WL 5761117 (E.D. La. Sept. 28, 2020). The district courts for the Southern District of California and the Northern District of Ohio disagree, as we discuss below. Our prior posts on this issue, which we have been following closely, can be found here.

In McCurley et al. v. Royal Sea Cruises, Inc., 2021 WL 288164 (S.D. Cal. Jan. 28, 2021), and Less v. Quest Diagnostics Incorporated, 2021 WL 266548 (N.D. Ohio Jan. 26, 2021), defendants argued that TCPA claims arising during the above-mentioned time period were barred because the TCPA was entirely unconstitutional during that period. Both the McCurley and the Less courts disagreed, though the two courts differed in their rationales.

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Northern District of Florida Picks Side in Creasy Split

In the aftermath of Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants, Inc.—the Supreme Court decision from July that held the TCPA’s government-debt exception to be an unconstitutional content-based restriction on speech—the country’s district courts cannot agree on whether they may adjudicate TCPA claims alleging conduct that transpired during the life of the exception (i.e., during the period from November 2, 2015 to July 6, 2020). Click here to see our collection of posts on this issue, which we have been following closely. Continue reading “Northern District of Florida Picks Side in Creasy Split”

Some Clinical Trial Calls Now Eligible for the FCC’s Revised TCPA Exemption

The TRACED Act’s December 30, 2020 deadline was not the end of the FCC’s recent series of actions to bring more clarity to certain forms of TCPA exemptions. Most recently, on January 15, 2021, the FCC issued a Declaratory Ruling “clarify[ing] that a call to a residential telephone line seeking an individual’s participation in a clinical pharmaceutical trial is not subject to the TCPA’s restrictions on prerecorded calls.” Instead, the FCC stated that these calls are eligible for exemption from the TCPA’s prior express written consent requirement as other calls to a residence that do not constitute telemarketing.

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Eastern District of California Adds to Creasy Split

As we have reported on here, here, here, and here, a growing number of district courts are issuing opinions addressing whether they have subject matter jurisdiction over TCPA claims alleging robocall violations that occurred when the government debt exception invalidated by Barr v. APPC, 140 S. Ct. 2335 (2020), was part of the statute.  The Eastern District of California recently added to this line of cases, joining courts that have held that “the TCPA remains enforceable, at least against non-government debt collectors, as to calls made between November 2015 and July 6, 2020.”  See Stoutt v Travis Credit Union, No. 2:20-cv-01280, 2021 WL 99636, at *3 (E.D. Cal. Jan. 12, 2021).

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District Court Dismisses Ex-Attorney and TCPA Serial Litigant’s Claims with Prejudice

On January 6, 2021, the District of Maryland dismissed a TCPA claim (and a derivative claim under Maryland’s MDTPCA) against Discount Power, Inc. (“Discount”). See Worsham v. Discount Power, Inc., No. 20-0008, 2021 WL 50922 (D. Md. Jan. 6, 2021). The decision is a helpful reminder that a number’s purpose can be a critical component of a TCPA claim and that defendants should therefore develop that fact during preliminary investigation and, if necessary, during formal discovery.

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Supreme Court Declines to Resolve Whether Its Bristol-Myers Squibb Decision Applies to Class Actions

The Supreme Court recently declined to review the Seventh Circuit’s ruling in Mussat v. IQVIA, Inc., 953 F.3d 441 (7th Cir. 2020), which found that the logic of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California, 582 US  (2017) did not apply to class actions and therefore that a federal court in Illinois somehow had specific personal jurisdiction over the individual claims of unnamed class members who had no connection whatsoever to that forum state.

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