Friday, January 29, 2021
One of the few things that hasn’t changed significantly since our last TCPA update is, well, the TCPA. We have a new year, a new President and multiple new COVID vaccines. And after the December oral argument in
Facebook v. Duguid before the Supreme Court, 2021 could be the year when we receive clarity on the critical TCPA question of what constitutes an automatic telephone dialing system (“ATDS”). Indeed, the argument seemed positive for the TCPA defense bar, with Justices Alito and Thomas chafing at the anachronistic nature of the statute and Justices Sotomayor and Gorsuch expressing concerns about the idea that every cellphone user could be subject to civil liability. But for now, the TCPA litigation landscape remains the same bizarre, often inconsistent quagmire that it always has been. We’ll continue to be your guide through the morass, and we summarize here developments since our last update, listed by issue category in a
Revoked Consent: Plaintiff Awarded $122,500 in Statutory Damages in Partial Summary Judgment Against Debt Collector and CEO in TCPA Case | Troutman Pepper jdsupra.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jdsupra.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
every Defendant knows to stay ATDS cases pending the outcome of
Facebook especially in
Ramsey decision slipped through to decision on the matter, even with
Facebook pending. And it did not go well.
The Court held that the Defendant’s use of the Noble predictive dialer system qualified as the use of an ATDS under the Sixth Circuit’s articulation of the ATDS definition in
Allan. It is critical to note, however, that it was Defendant’s hyper automated usage of Noble that triggered statutory coverage. Noble linked into a system of record called PICK operated by the collector. Because the PICK system AUTOMATICALLY chose accounts and passed phone numbers to be stored and dialed from Noble, without human intervention, the Court determined that an ATDS was used. In the Court’s words: