District court concludes loan servicer violated TCPA

Courts Ninth Circuit Appellate ACA International TCPA Privacy/Cyber Risk & Data Security Student Lending

On August 19, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan held that a Pennsylvania-based student loan servicing agency violated the TCPA by calling the plaintiffs’ cell phones over 350 times using an automatic telephone dialing system (autodailer) after consent was revoked. According to the opinion, after revoking consent to receive calls via an autodialer, two plaintiffs asserted that the servicer called their cell phones collectively over 350 times in violation of the TCPA and moved for summary judgment seeking treble damages for each violation. In response, the loan servicer argued that the system used to make the calls does not meet the statutory definition of an autodialer under the TCPA and disputed the appropriateness of treble damages.

The court, in disagreeing with the loan servicer, concluded that the system used by the loan servicer to make the calls qualified as an autodialer. The court applied the logic of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC (covered by InfoBytes here), stating that it was not bound by the FCC’s interpretations of an autodialer, based on the D.C. Circuit’s ruling in ACA International v. FCC, and therefore, “‘only the statutory definition of [autodialer] as set forth by Congress in 1991 remains.’” The court noted that there was “no question” that the system used by the loan servicer “stores telephone numbers to be called and automatically dials those numbers,” which qualifies the system as an autodialer. However, the court determined that the loan servicer did not violate the statute “willfully or knowingly,” noting that at the time of the calls it was not clear from the FCC whether the system being used was an autodialer.  As a result, the court awarded statutory damages, but not the treble damages sought by the plaintiffs.