Litigation

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released the text of its long-awaited order addressing certain aspects of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and related FCC rules.  The order addressed a total of 21 petitions seeking “clarification or other actions” regarding the TCPA, principally in connection with automated calls and text messages.

Although the order purports only to “clarify” existing FCC precedent, there is widespread debate over whether the order imposed new requirements on entities that transmit automated calls and text messages.  The order already has been appealed by one party and other appeals are expected.  Nevertheless, because the FCC claims the order only clarifies existing precedent, its provisions became effective when the order was released on July 10, 2015.

The order focuses on ten key areas, which are summarized after the jump.
Continue Reading Ten Key Takeaways From Last Week’s TCPA Order

On June 22, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Los Angeles v. Patel, striking down a Los Angeles city ordinance that allowed law enforcement to inspect hotel guest registers on demand as facially unconstitutional.  Writing for a 5-4 majority, Justice Sotomayor held that the ordinance violated the Fourth Amendment by failing to provide for any form of review of search requests before hotels were forced to comply with law enforcement demands.  According to the Court, this failure was fatal to the City of Los Angeles’ argument that the ordinance satisfies the requirements for the administrative search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.
Continue Reading Supreme Court Strikes Down Ordinance Authorizing Warrantless Searches of Hotel Records

On June 1, the Northern District of California dismissed a putative TCPA class action against AOL, finding that the plaintiff had failed to allege that AOL utilized an automated telephone dialing system (ATDS), as required to state a cause of action under the TCPA.  In dismissing the plaintiff’s complaint in Derby v. AOL, the court rejected the plaintiff’s arguments that AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), which allows individuals to send instant messages as text messages to cell phones, constitutes an ATDS.  Instead, the court agreed with AOL’s argument that AIM relied on “human intervention” to send the messages at issue, which foreclosed the possibility of potential TCPA liability.  (Covington represented AOL in this case.)  The decision should be beneficial to a variety of services that enable their users to send text messages to cell phones.
Continue Reading Court Dismisses Text-Message TCPA Suit Against AOL, Finding Instant Messaging Service Does Not Constitute an ATDS

Last Tuesday, District Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California partially granted the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification in In re Yahoo Mail Litig., allowing the plaintiffs to pursue their claims for injunctive relief on behalf of class members under the Stored Communications Act (“SCA”) and California’s Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”).  The plaintiffs, none of whom has a Yahoo email account, originally filed suit alleging that Yahoo scanned emails they exchanged with other individuals’ Yahoo email addresses and used the results for advertising purposes.  Last August, Judge Koh partially granted Yahoo’s motion to dismiss, eliminating the plaintiff’s claims under the Wiretap Act and the California Constitution but allowing the SCA and CIPA claims to proceed.
Continue Reading Court Certifies Nationwide Class in Yahoo Email Scanning Litigation

In the closely-watched case of Spokeo, Inc. v Robins, the Solicitor General recently filed an amicus brief urging the Court to deny certiorari and leave in place the 9th Circuit’s holding, which could encourage the rising tide of privacy class action litigation.  The Solicitor General’s brief—coauthored by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—argued that the…

Last month a federal court found Dish Network liable for calls that were alleged by the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) to violate various provisions of the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule (“TSR”).  Specifically, the FTC’s 2009 complaint asserted that Dish Network initiated, or caused a telemarketer to initiate, calls to numbers on the National Do Not Call (“DNC”) Registry and to consumers who previously declined to receive such calls whose numbers were on Dish Network’s entity-specific do-not-call list or were marked “DNC” by a telemarketing vendor.  The FTC also alleged that, in violation of the “abandoned-call” provision of the TSR, Dish Network abandoned or caused telemarketers to abandon phone calls.  In its complaint, the FTC seeks monetary civil penalties from Dish Network for every violation of the TSR, for which the court is entitled to award up to $16,000 for each violation.  At issue are tens of millions of calls, making the potential level of damages to be awarded at the trial stage staggering.
Continue Reading Court Finds FTC Entitled to Partial Summary Judgment Against Dish Network for Telemarketing Violations

Earlier this week, U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas directed the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and Wyndham Hotels and Resorts to seek mediation to resolve their landmark dispute over whether the FTC has the authority to regulate companies’ data-security practices.  As we’ve previously reported, the FTC alleged that Wyndham violated Section 5 of the…

By Ani Gevorkian

Last week, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California issued an opinion regarding the definition of  an “Automatic Telephone Dialing System” (“ATDS”) under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”).  The opinion follows a small but growing number of cases holding that courts have their own ability to interpret the statutory definition of ATDS and need not follow the Federal Communication Commission’s interpretation of that term.

The case, Marks v. Crunch San Diego, involved a class action suit against gym-operator Crunch San Diego (“Crunch”) for its use of a third-party web-based platform to send promotional text messages to current and prospective member mobile phones.  The plaintiff claimed he had received three unwanted text messages from Crunch over the course of about a month, in violation of the TCPA.  The motion for summary judgment turned on the issue of whether the platform Crunch used could be classified as an ATDS.  The court held that it could not.Continue Reading Another Court Finds That an Automated SMS Platform is Not an ATDS