The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Facebook, determining that the text messages sent to Noah Duguid did not violate the TCPA. They accepted Facebook's argument that the device used to send the messages does not fit the TCPA's definition of an ATDS. For more information, see this news article.
In July 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) Omnibus Declaratory Ruling and Order that overhauled and updated a number of aspects of the statute. Among the changes was a debt exemption that permitted automated calls to cellphones when the calls were for the collection of government-backed debt such as a student loan.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a declaratory ruling in 2020 affirming that peer-to-peer (P2P) texting systems should not be considered automatic telephone dialing systems (ATDS). The Supreme Court's ruling in Facebook v. Duguid also ensures that P2P systems should not be regulated as autodialers.
Vicarious liability is defined as an attachment of responsibility to a party for harm or damages caused by another party in a lawsuit or civil action.
It is a common practice for many businesses to market their products through the use of independent sales forces and lead aggregator websites. While these can be great sources for obtaining fresh leads, they can also be a trap for Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) litigation.
Political campaigns get a small amount of wiggle room when making calls or sending texts using an Automatic Telephone Dialing System (ATDS). Calls to landlines numbers do not require consent and it is not required to suppress numbers against the National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry. However, calls or texts to wireless numbers require prior express consent.
Further Reading
The best practices for avoiding Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) violations and the attendant lawsuits are as follows:
Make Sure You Have Clear Consent
In order for a court to proceed with a class action, the class must first be certified. When it comes to the TCPA, if the defendant can provide evidence of consent procedures, and prove consent for the individual plaintiff, the class as a whole, or a subset of the class, then the class certification may be denied.
An automated text message is a text message sent to a consumer or consumers through the use of an automated text messaging platform. Regardless of whether the message itself is manually or automatically generated, it is treated as an automated text message if an autodialer platform is used to deliver the message.
The courts have been unanimous in the viewpoint that a call is a text and a text is a call. Automated text messages should be treated exactly like calls placed using an autodialer and the same consent rules should be observed.
Also known as “soundboard technology,” avatar technology was described by the D.C. District Court of Appeals as a technology that “enables telemarketing agents to communicate with consumers over the phone by playing prerecorded audio clips instead of using the agent’s live voice. The agent can choose a prerecorded clip to ask questions or respond to a consumer while retaining the ability to break into the call and speak to the consumer directly. Soundboard also enables agents to make and participate in multiple calls simultaneously.”