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11th Circuit: Unsolicited text message doesn't establish standing under TCPA
On August 28, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit held that receiving one unsolicited text message is not enough of a concrete injury to establish standing under the TCPA. According to the opinion, a former client of an attorney received an unsolicited “multimedia text message” from the attorney offering a ten percent discount on services. The client filed a putative class action, alleging the attorney violated the TCPA arguing the text message caused him “‘to waste his time answering or otherwise addressing the message’” leaving his cell phone “‘unavailable for otherwise legitimate pursuits’” and resulted in “‘an invasion of [] privacy and right to enjoy the full utility’” of his cell phone. The attorney moved to dismiss the complaint for lack of standing and the district court denied the motion. However, the court allowed the attorney to pursue an interlocutory appeal.
On appeal, the 11th Circuit looked to the Supreme Court decision in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins— which held that a plaintiff must allege a concrete injury, not just a statutory violation, to establish standing—as well as the legislative history of the TCPA and determined there was “little support” for treating the client’s allegations as a concrete injury. Specifically, the panel noted that the allegations of “a brief, inconsequential annoyance are categorically distinct from those kinds of real but intangible harms” Congress set out to protect. Moreover, the “chirp, buzz, or blink of a cell phone” is annoying, but not a basis for invoking federal court jurisdiction. The panel also acknowledged that Congress, not a federal court, is “well positioned” to assess the new harms of technology. Because the client failed to allege a concrete harm by receiving the unsolicited text message, the panel reversed the district court decision.
District Court upholds $925 million TCPA jury verdict against direct sales company
On August 21, the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon upheld a $925 million jury verdict against a direct sales company in a TCPA class action lawsuit, denying the company’s motion to decertify the class. According to the opinion, the named plaintiff brought the 2015 class action lawsuit alleging the company violated the TCPA by calling consumers using an artificial or prerecorded voice without their consent. In April 2019, a jury concluded that a total of 1,850,436 calls were made using an artificial or prerecorded voice to either cell phones or landlines. However, in June 2019, the FCC granted a request made by the company in September 2017 for a retroactive waiver of the agency’s 2012 new written consent requirements for telemarketing robocalls, but only as it applied to “calls for which the petitioner had obtained some form of written consent.” Based on the newly-obtained waiver from the FCC, the company moved to decertify the class arguing that, among other things, (i) the named plaintiff lacked standing, and (ii) consent is now an individualized issue that “predominates” over the class issues. The court rejected these arguments, concluding that the company waived the affirmative defense of consent by not raising the defense earlier in the litigation when it knew its FCC waiver was pending. Specifically, the court reasoned that the failure to raise the issue “given the likelihood that the FCC would grant its waiver petition was unreasonable.” The court also rejected the company’s predominance arguments, concluding that whether the calls were made to a landline or cellphone is irrelevant as TCPA liability “attaches to any call made [to] either” type. The court concluded that class certification was proper, upholding the jury’s verdict.
District court concludes loan servicer violated TCPA
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.
District Court approves TCPA class action settlement
On August 15, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California entered a final approval order and judgment to resolve class action allegations claiming a security system company and its third-party dealer violated the TCPA through the use of an automatic telephone dialing system and prerecorded messages. According to the claims, consumers—including those on the do-not-call registry—allegedly received telemarketing calls at their residences or on cellphones from the dealer or the dealer’s sub-dealers promoting goods or services offered by the company. The company argued it was not responsible for calls the dealer made on its behalf, but the district court denied summary judgment and set a trial date. However, prior to the trial’s commencement, the parties reached a settlement. Under the terms of the settlement, the company agreed to implement changes to its practices to ensure TCPA compliance and banned the dealer from marketing or activating new accounts for the company. The company also agreed to pay $28 million into a settlement fund for consumer redress, no more than $1.4 million towards settlement administrator costs and expenses, $30,000 total in service awards to class representatives, and combined attorneys’ fees and litigation costs of approximately $7.5 million.
District Court strikes class certification from robocall suit
On July 18, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois granted a rental car company’s (defendant) motion to strike class allegations in a TCPA suit over alleged robocalls. The plaintiff, whose telephone number was listed on a rental contract between his mother and the defendant in addition to the mother’s telephone number, claimed he received multiple prerecorded messages on his cellphone from the defendant after his mother failed to return the car when it was due, even though he had allegedly opted out of the communications. The plaintiff commenced the suit, ultimately seeking certification of an amended putative class of all noncustomers who received automated calls from the defendant “where such [a] call was placed after a request to stop calling that phone number.” In August 2018, the court denied summary judgment to the defendant, who subsequently moved to strike class allegations. The court granted the defendant’s motion, stating there were too many contested facts that raised unique defenses particular to the plaintiff’s case, including (i) the type of consent to receive calls that the plaintiff’s mother gave under her contract; (ii) whether the calls to the plaintiff’s phone were robocalls; and (iii) whether and how the plaintiff revoked the consent given by his mother.
8th Circuit affirms reduction in TCPA statutory damages from $1.6 billion to $32 million
On July 16, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit affirmed a district court’s decision to reduce a $1.6 billion award in statutory damages for TCPA violations to $32.4 million after the court determined the original award violated the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The named plaintiffs in the class action alleged that parties involved in the financing and marketing campaign of a film with religious and political themes violated the TCPA through the use of a telephone campaign in which approximately 3.2 million prerecorded robocalls were made in the course of a week. The plaintiffs—who received two of these messages on their answering machine—filed an appeal after the district court concluded that the original award was “‘obviously unreasonable and wholly disproportionate to the offense’” and reduced the statutory damages awarded by a jury from $500 per call to $10 per call.
On appeal, the 8th Circuit addressed several issues, including (i) whether the plaintiffs alleged a concrete injury under the TCPA; (ii) whether the district court abused its discretion concerning instructions on direct liability against one of the defendants; and (iii) whether the court erred in finding the amount of statutory damages to be unconstitutional. The appellate court first reviewed whether the plaintiffs had alleged a sufficiently concrete injury under the TCPA. According to the opinion, “[t]he harm to be remedied by the TCPA was ‘the unwanted intrusion and nuisance of unsolicited telemarketing phone calls and fax advertisements. . . .The [plaintiffs’] harm . . . was the receipt of two telemarketing messages without prior consent. These harms bear a close relationship to the types of harms traditionally remedied by tort law, particularly the law of nuisance.” However, the appellate court stated that the district court was correct to reject the plaintiffs’ direct liability instructions against the defendant who helped finance the film, writing that the plaintiffs “improperly blurred the line between direct and agency liability” and that “to be held directly liable, the defendant must be the one who ‘initiates’ the call,” which the financing defendant did not do. Finally, the appellate court agreed with the district court that the $1.6 billion award violated the Due Process Clause, and highlighted evidence that the advertiser “plausibly believed it was not violating the TCPA” and “had prior consent to call the recipients about religious liberty,” which was a predominant theme of the film being promoted. Moreover, the court noted,”[t]he call campaign was conducted for only about a week,” and recipients could only hear the message about the film if they voluntarily opted in during the call. The court further reasoned that “the harm to the recipients was not severe—only about 7% of the calls made it to the third question, the one about the film. Under these facts, $1.6 billion is ‘so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense and obviously unreasonable.’”
9th Circuit reverses dismissal of TCPA class action against social media company
On June 13, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit overturned the dismissal of a TCPA putative class action against a social media company, concluding the plaintiff adequately alleged the company sent text messages using an automated telephone dialing system (autodialer) in violation of the TCPA and holding that the “debt-collection exception” excluding calls “made solely to collect a debt owed to or guaranteed by the United States” from TCPA coverage is an unconstitutional restriction on speech. The consumer alleged that he that he had received a text message indicating that his account was accessed from an unrecognized device, although he allegedly was not a user of the social media site and never consented to the alerts.
On appeal, the company challenged the adequacy of the TCPA allegations and, alternatively, argued that the TCPA violates the First Amendment. The 9th Circuit concluded the plaintiff plausibly alleged the company’s text message system fell within the definition of autodialer under the TCPA— using the definition from its September 2018 decision in Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC. The appellate court rejected the company’s argument that an “expansive reading” of Marks would encapsulate any smartphone within the definition of autodailer and that the definition should not apply to “purely ‘responsive messages’” such as the text messages in question. The appellate court also agreed with the company— citing to the 4th Circuit’s recent decision in AAPC v. FCC, covered by InfoBytes here— that an exclusion under the TCPA that allows debt collectors to use an autodialer to contact individuals on their cell phones when collecting debts owed to or guaranteed by the federal government violates the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause. However, the appellate court held that the debt collection exception is severable from the TCPA, and, therefore, declined to strike down the law it its entirety as the company requested.
District Court denies summary judgment for auto financing company in TCPA action
On June 12, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois denied an auto financing company’s renewed motion for summary judgment and request for reconsideration, concluding that the company’s calling system falls within the definition of automatic telephone dialing system (autodialer) under the TCPA.
According to the opinion, two separate class actions were filed alleging that the company violated the TCPA when making calls to consumers regarding outstanding auto loans by using an autodailer. In April 2016, the company filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing, among other things, that the calling system it uses does not constitute an autodialer under the TCPA, and moved to stay the proceedings until the D.C. Circuit issued its ruling in a related case, ACA International v. FCC. The court denied the motions but stated that it would “revisit any issues affected by [the ACA International] decision as needed.” In March 2018, the D.C. Circuit issued its ruling in ACA International, concluding that the FCC’s 2015 interpretation of an autodialer was “unreasonably expansive.” (Covered by a Buckley Special Alert here.)
The company then filed the renewed motion for summary judgment and request for reconsideration of the earlier decision. The court denied the motion, concluding that the company’s calling system was an autodialer under the TCPA as a matter of law, because the system automatically dialed numbers from a set customer list. The court applied the logic of 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 ACA International, and “[a]s such, ‘only the statutory definition of [autodialer] as set forth by Congress in 1991 remains.’” After reviewing the legislative history of the TCPA, the court determined that “[g]iven Congress’s particular contempt for automated calls and concern for the protection of consumer privacy,” the autodialer definition “includes autodialed calls from a pre-existing list of recipients,” rejecting the company’s argument that an autodialer must have the capacity to generate telephone numbers, not just pull from a preexisting list. Additionally, the court concluded that the system “need not be completely free of all human intervention” to fall under the definition of autodialer.
4th Circuit upholds certification of TCPA class action against satellite provider
On May 30, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit held that a lower court correctly certified a class of individuals who claimed a satellite provider (defendant) violated the TCPA when its authorized sales representative routinely placed telemarketing calls to numbers on the national Do-Not-Call registry. The plaintiff-appellee alleged that because his number was on the registry, the calls were not only annoying but illegal. He therefore filed a lawsuit against the defendant for violations of the TCPA, and in 2018, the court issued a final judgment upholding a jury’s verdict as to both liability and damages for a class of 18,066 members, tripling the damages to more than $61 million. The defendant appealed the verdict asserting that the class definition was too broad in that included uninjured consumers. Specifically, the defendant argued that the definition should be limited to telephone subscribers or the person who actually received the calls. The defendant further asserted on appeal that it was not responsible for the sales representative’s actions.
On appeal, the 4th Circuit affirmed the lower court’s judgment, stating that it saw “no basis for imposing such a limit,” on the class definition given that “[t]he text of the TCPA notes that it was intended to protect ‘consumers,’ not simply ‘subscribers.’” Concerning the defendant’s argument that it was not responsible for the violations, the appellate court noted that the sales representative’s “entire business model was to make calls like these on behalf of television service providers,” like the defendant, which the defendant knew were being placed on its behalf.
3rd Circuit: Commercial purpose does not make unsolicited fax an advertisement under TCPA
On May 28, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, in a consolidated action, affirmed summary judgment that a health care provider database company’s (defendant) unsolicited fax did not violate the TCPA. According to the opinion, the defendant updated its database by sending unsolicited faxes to healthcare providers, requesting that they voluntarily update their contact information, if necessary. The fax included disclaimers that there was no cost to the recipient for participating in the database maintenance initiative and that it was not an attempt to sell a product. The plaintiff sued the defendant alleging a state law claim and that the fax violated the TCPA’s prohibition on sending unsolicited advertisements by fax. The district court entered summary judgment in favor of the defendant and declined to exercise jurisdiction over the state law claim.
On appeal, the 3rd Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment, rejecting the plaintiff’s third-party liability argument that the fax should be regarded as an advertisement, even though he was not a purchaser of the company’s services. The 3rd Circuit held that to establish third-party based liability under TCPA, the “plaintiff must show that the fax: (1) sought to promote or enhance the quality or quantity of a product or services being sold commercially; (2) was reasonably calculated to increase the profits of the sender; and (3) directly or indirectly encouraged the recipient to influence the purchasing decisions of a third party.” The appellate court found that, even though the defendant had a “profit motive” in sending the fax because it wanted to improve the quality of its product by making its database more accurate, “the faxes did not attempt to influence the purchasing decisions of any potential buyer,” nor did the fax encourage the recipient to influence the purchasing decisions of a third party.