The Southern District of New York Court rendered a costly judgment against the defendant in Jiminez v. Credit One Bank, N.A., No. 17 CV 2844-LTS-JLC, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 203613 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 22, 2019): $197,000 for 380 calls that violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Interestingly, 42 of those calls were made to a disconnected phone number, yet the court still awarded penalties to the plaintiff for the full slate of calls.
The case centered on calls made with a predictive dialer on behalf of Credit One. Surprisingly, the court used a definition of a predictive dialer as an automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS) that drew on the pre-ACA Int’l 2003 and 2008 FCC rulings. The court also determined that the defendant did not have consent to call a former customer, which is notable because a different district court in a different case involving the same defendant—Roark v. Credit One Bank, N.A., No. 16-173 (PAM/ECW), 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 193252 (D. Minn. Nov. 13, 2018)—came to the exact opposite ruling on that particular subject. Similarly, other courts in other cases have found that predictive dialers are not considered to be ATDS.
Perhaps the most notable conclusion to draw from this case, besides gawking at the expensive price tag, is that the precedent as to whether or not predictive dialers are ATDS remains uncertain. Murky waters, indeed.
Further Reading
