In Emily Smith v. The Hartford, No. 4:20-CV-00041-CLM, 2020 WL 4815143 (N.D. Ala. Aug. 19, 2020), the Court refused to consider mental incapacity, among other arguments, as grounds to overcome the Eleventh Circuit’s strict exhaustion requirement for ERISA. This decision reinforces the very narrow exceptions available to a plaintiff in circumventing the exhaustion requirement.
Today, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Duguid v. Facebook to decide, once and for all, whether an automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS), as the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) defines the phrase, requires random or sequential number generation. The case will be argued before the Court in the October 2020 Term.
Background
In its
The United States Supreme Court issued its much-awaited decision in Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants on Monday, July 6, striking down the government-backed debt exemption in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The Court did not go so far as to invalidate the TCPA as a whole, however, finding instead that the unconstitutional
The Tenth Circuit developed a new rule under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) in Ellis v. Liberty Assurance Company of Boston (case number 19-1074), holding last week that courts should adhere to choice-of-law provisions in ERISA health benefits plans.
In Ellis, the Tenth Circuit considered whether Michael Ellis’ health benefits
On May 13, a federal court in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California granted a defendant’s motion to dismiss in a putative class action brought under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The Court dismissed the plaintiff’s claims that the defendant, an e-commerce provider that offers a texting platform to
Please join Troutman Sanders attorneys, Virginia Flynn, Chad Fuller, Alan Wingfield, and Brooke Conkle for the Complimentary Webinar “Hot Topics for Calling in the Time of COVID-19,” on Wednesday, May 20, 2020 at 3:00 p.m. EDT.
This webinar will cover the landmark decisions rendered by the Second, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits in
On April 7, 2020, the Second Circuit added more uncertainty to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) with its decision on the meaning of an automatic telephone dialing system (“ATDS”) in Duran v. La Boom Disco, Inc. Breaking from recent Seventh and Eleventh Circuit decisions, which followed the statutory language in requiring random and
On March 20, 2020 the FCC issued a Declaratory Ruling specifically outlining how calls and messages will be treated under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) with regard to the novel coronavirus (“COVID-19”). In its sua sponte Declaratory Ruling, The FCC exempted certain calls related to the COVID-19 pandemic from TCPA requirements – but only
2019 was a transformative year for the consumer financial services world. As we navigate an unprecedented volume of industry regulation, Troutman Sanders is uniquely positioned to help its clients find successful resolutions and stay ahead of the compliance curve.
In this report, we share developments on consumer class actions, background screening, bankruptcy, consumer credit
Any company that uses telephony systems for outreach to consumers got important and potentially good news on January 27, 2020, when the Eleventh Circuit released its much-anticipated opinion in Glasser v. Hilton Grand Vacations Company, LLC, No. 18-14499. The court held that a phone system must use randomly or sequentially generated numbers to qualify