When will the Maryland Mini-TCPA go into effect? Maryland is passing a mini-TCPA regulating the act of telephone solicitation called “Stop the Spam Calls Act of 2023.” While this act does not go into effect till January 1, 2024, it’s never too early to familiarize...
TCPA
Game Changing Amendments to the FTSA
The Florida Telephone Solicitation Act (“FTSA”), Fla. Stat. § 501.059, has been a thorn in the side of the telemarketing industry since its enactment. A recent amended to the FTSA provided much needed relief. On May 25, 2023, the Governor of Florida signed a...
Bifurcated Discovery: A Crucial Tool for TCPA Class Action Defendants
Class discovery in a class action case is burdensome and expensive. It is often unavoidable unless an early settlement is reached. Moving for bifurcated discovery is one way for a class action defendant to avoid class discovery. How does bifurcated discovery work in a...
How One Case Changed Personal Jurisdiction
Where is "Home?" In TCPA cases, some defendants who are not “at home” in the forum state are seeking dismissal under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(2). These defendants are attempting to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. To the Court, "Home" is...
What The Supreme Court’s Facebook Ruling Means for The Future of TCPA Claims
Yesterday the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, clarifying what qualifies as an automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS) under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. For potential TCPA defendants, it’s a very good ruling—it adopts a narrow...
Virginia Becomes Second State to Adopt Data Protection Law – What This May Mean for Your Business
On March 2, 2021, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed off on the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (“CDPA”), which will take effect on January 1, 2023. This makes Virginia the second state in the country (after California) to adopt more comprehensive...
When is Calling or Messaging Software an Autodialer under the TCPA?
In my opening article on the TCPA, I provided a brief overview of what the TCPA is and how it may affect your business.[1] In this follow-up article, I’ll dive a bit deeper into a key question that commonly arises in TCPA disputes: was a call or message sent with an...
A Brief Intro to the TCPA
This article offers a brief introduction to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act¹ and the Federal Communications Commission’s implementing regulations², which I’ll refer to collectively here as the “TCPA.”³ Among other things, the TCPA regulates calls or messages...
Roth Jackson Attorneys Settle Landmark FTC Litigation – Company Rescued from Receivership.
Roth Jackson attorneys were instrumental in the settlement of a landmark lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission and Ohio Attorney General that resulted in favorable settlement terms for its clients and the release of companies from receivership. The FTC and...
Court Adopts Present Capacity Standard for Autodialers and Reasonableness Test for Calls to Reassigned Numbers
TCPA defendants can add another weapon to their arsenal with Roark v. Credit One Bank, N.A., a decision out of the District of Minnesota (in the 8th Circuit). Roark provides the first rejection of the 9th Circuit’s ruling in Marks v. Crunch SanDiego, LLC (which we...
Court Rejects Marks and Holds that ACA Int’l Vacated FCC’s Predictive Dialer Rulings and that an ATDS Must Have the Capacity to Generate Phone Numbers
The Northern District of Iowa has given us TCPA practitioners an excellent piece of authority to show that Congress meant what it wrote when it defined an “automatic telephone dialing system.” The court, in Harbach v. USAA Federal Savings Bank, held that for a...
Court Denies Class Certification in TCPA “Wrong Number” Case
Even in well-tended yards, weeds can emerge. Wrong numbers are the weeds of a well-tended TCPA compliance program. Notwithstanding your best efforts to cultivate and grow communications campaigns rooted in consumer consent, calls to wrong numbers are often inevitable....
No Fruit of the Poisonous SMS: Trial Court Rules that Responding to “HELP” Message Doesn’t Violate the TCPA, Even if Initial Message Did
New Jersey’s federal trial court ruled in Zemel v. CSC Holdings, LLC that “when an individual sends a message inviting a responsive text, there is no TCPA violation” when you respond. That sounds perfectly reasonable, but the outcome was not a foregone conclusion. In...
Jos. A. Bank and its SMS Platform Provider Stitch Win Together where Consumer Claimed SMS were Telemarketing Messages
When we help clients design TCPA-compliant SMS marketing campaigns, one of the key issues we focus on is syncing up the content of the message with the level of consent we’ve achieved at any stage in the consumer experience. As all good TCPA students know,...
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Creates Circuit Split With Broad Autodialer Ruling
No company using modern technology to communicate with their customers was unhappy when the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the FCC’s overly broad interpretation of what equipment qualifies as an “automatic telephone dialing system” (“ATDS” or, colloquially, an...