The decision in ACA Int’l v. FCC, 885 F.3d 687, 701 (D.C. Cir. 2018), invalidated the Federal Communications Commission’s 2015 Declaratory Ruling with regard to what qualifies as an automatic telephone dialing system, or “ATDS,” under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Based on this, the Third
In what could be seen as an early holiday present to those institutions often entangled in Telephone Consumer Protection Act litigation, a district court in the Eleventh Circuit not only denied certification in a TCPA wrong number class action, but also struck down common methods used by plaintiffs to ascertain class members. Going further, the
U.S. District Judge Brian R. Martinotti recently granted in part and denied in part a motion to dismiss a Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action lawsuit based on unsolicited text messages sent through an automated dialing system. The ruling illustrates the nuanced approach taken by some courts in analyzing whether individual text messages can form
On December 17, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that Quest Diagnostics violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by placing debt collection calls to an individual on her mobile device without her consent.
In his six-page opinion, Judge
On December 14, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed a proposed Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action against Agoda Company Pte., ruling that the subject text message was not an advertisement for Agoda’s app.
Agoda runs a worldwide hotel reservation service that customers can use through the company’s website or
On December 12, the Federal Communications Commission adopted new rules that will establish a reassigned telephone number database that companies can use to check their call lists. As an incentive to use the database, the FCC has provided a safe harbor: companies will not face liability for calls to reassigned numbers caused by database error.
The district court in the Northern District of Illinois granted summary judgment to the defendant in a TCPA case on the grounds that its dialing system no longer fit the definition of an automatic telephone dialing system (“ATDS”) because it dialed numbers from a stored list. In doing so, the Court reversed its
On November 28, Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) introduced the REAL PEACE Act, short for “Robocall Elimination At Last Protecting Every American Consumer’s Ears.” The goal of the legislation is to provide the Federal Trade Commission with the power to regulate companies that facilitate robocalls and, of particular importance,
On November 27, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court’s dismissal of a second putative Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action on the grounds that the American Pipe tolling principles did not apply, meaning the plaintiff’s claims on behalf of himself, his company, and the purported class were untimely.
In Weitzner v.
A United States district court in Illinois recently granted a non-resident defendant’s motion to strike the class definition in a putative nationwide TCPA class action, pursuant to Bristol-Myers Squibb, broadly holding that due process “bars nationwide class actions in fora where the defendant is not subject to general jurisdiction.” The case is Mussat v.