Happy Halloween TCPA-landers!
This year’s TCPA filings are downright ghoulish, although slightly below last year’s count YTD. We’re expecting to see something in the neighborhood of 4,600 total TCPA filings in 2017. Bloodcurdling.
If that isn’t enough to make you scream, consider that TCPA class actions are still being filed at quadruple the rate seen before the FCC’s 2015 TCPA Omnibus ruling. And with the ACA, Int’l appeal of the Omnibus still languishing within the dungeons of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals—over a year has passed since oral argument!—there is no end in sight for this cataclysm of class actions.
But the really *horrifying* statistic this year is the .071 batting average that defendants have mustered on motions to stay TCPA cases pending the outcome of the ACA, Int’l appeal since August of this year. As you can see from the chart below, courts have changed their thinking when it comes to these stay motions and are now forcing Defendants to litigate these suits despite the very real possibility that the Omnibus might soon be heading for the gallows.
Well, my bones are chilled. Good luck sleeping tonight.
