On Demand Insurance is Here But Will it Stay?
The Ever-Expanding Scope of Social Media Discovery
Is the Patent Litigation Boom Coming to an End?
Apple Loses First 'Big' Case to MobileMedia, Lawyer Says
“At what point do we simply say . . . this statute is an ill fit for current technology?” – Justice Clarence Thomas Nearly 3 decades before Zack Morris ascended to the fictional governorship of California, he was America’s...more
Retailer groups, including the National Retail Foundation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Restaurant Law Center, are part of a coalition urging the Federal Communications Commission to clarify what constitutes an...more
The Situation: The Telephone Consumer Protection Act ("TCPA") prohibits unconsented calls or texts made "using an automatic telephone dialing system" ("ATDS"), defined as "equipment which has the capacity—(1) to store or...more
Companies in consumer-facing industries face a continued barrage of lawsuits under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). In 2019, TCPA lawsuits remained one of the most commonly filed type of class action in federal...more
More than a year has passed since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ended its supplemental comment period aimed at providing guidance on the definition of an “automatic telephone dialing system” (ATDS or autodialer)...more
Deploy Call Authentication Technology by 2019 or Else, FCC Tells Voice Providers - In letters sent to voice providers large and small by Chairman Pai on November 5 and 6, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”)...more
I make a point to never post on the weekends. But this is a huge deal. And although it is a beautiful autumn afternoon outside, we need to talk TCPAland. Congress just proposed a bill to attack robocalls by leveraging the...more
Class action plaintiffs’ attorneys may argue that a recent ruling by the Ninth Circuit expands the scope of liability under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) to include calls or text messages sent on all modern...more
I just finished reading through most of the big consumer-side comments from notable Plaintiff’s lawyers, and consumer protection organizations. News flash: they all agree that the FCC should adopt the Marks interpretation of...more
Well yesterday was the deadline for supplemental comments on the FCC’s big TCPA Public Notice. So today I begin the process of reading and digesting these things and reporting to all of you - I have just reviewed these in...more
In Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC, No. 14-56834, 2018 WL 4495553 (9th Cir. Sept. 20, 2018), the Ninth Circuit gave us a new definition of an automatic telephone dialing system. Crunch argues that in expanding the definition...more
As we get near Halloween, how about a quick tale of a phantom lurking in our halls? Amidst all of the hubbub surrounding the big Marks opinion a couple weeks back–including the FCC’s decision to re-open the comment period...more
Ever since the D.C. Circuit’s ruling six months ago in ACA Int’l v. FCC, 885 F.3d 687 (D.C. Cir. 2018), which invalidated the FCC’s interpretation of an Automatic Telephone Dialing System (“ATDS”), a consensus had been...more
In a ruling that increases liability for companies that use text messaging for marketing or communicating with customers, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit adopted an expansive definition of what constitutes an...more
We clearly do not have a crystal ball here in TCPAland, otherwise we would have been able to accurately predict the Ninth Circuit’s monumental recent decision in Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC, 2018 WL 4495553 (9th Cir. Sept....more
• Parting company with the 3rd Circuit, the 9th Circuit has ruled that equipment that can automatically dial stored numbers may qualify as an ATDS under the TCPA. • The ruling creates a split of authority as to whether the...more
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com I won’t bury the lead here–in the Third Circuit a dialer that calls from a list of numbers “individually and manually inputted into its system by a user” is not an ATDS unless it has the present...more
On June 7, 2018, a Florida district court held that Plaintiff’s putative class action allegations that Defendant twice texted his cell phone number without consent using an ATDS was sufficient to state a claim under the TCPA...more
Greetings, TCPAlanders! I am the Earl of TCPAland. It is my pleasure to meet you all via the interwebs. Below, I bestow upon thee my learned thoughts on four more comments to FCC Docket 18-152. Buckle in, here we go!...more
On March 16, 2018, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued its long awaited decision in ACA International v. FCC, in which a group of petitioners across a spectrum of industries sought...more
As we reported last month, on the heels of the D.C. Circuit’s ruling in ACA Int’l v. FCC, the D.C. Circuit has created a tabula rasa for the FCC’s treatment of reassigned numbers under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act...more
On March 16, 2018, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit released its much anticipated ruling in ACA International, et al., v. Federal Communications Commission rejecting the expansive definition of...more
Here are answers to many of the Frequently Asked Questions arising from the DC Circuit’s decision in ACA International. TCPA R.I.P.? - No. The DC Circuit struck down two of the FCC’s most controversial rules—the...more
In a much-anticipated decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has set aside the Federal Communications Commission's 2015 Declaratory Ruling, which broadly interpreted the Telephone Consumer...more
Let’s face it: The residential phone line is on the verge of suffering the same fate as the 8-track tape. Anyone who doesn’t know what an 8-track tape is most assuredly uses a cell phone—and only a cell phone—to communicate....more