Throughout the various ups and downs of Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) litigation, federal and state regulatory actions, and precedent-setting court decisions, one of the few consistent truths is that plaintiff attorneys make money hand over fist. A recent case strongly reinforces that truth, with a court entering an order approving a fee of nearly $90 million for the plaintiff lawyers in a TCPA case.

The case itself—Perez v. Rash Curtis & Assocs., Case No. 4:16-cv-03396-YGR, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68161, (N.D. Cal. April 17, 2020)—resulted in a $267 million verdict against a debt collector who had used skip tracing and made over half a million TCPA-violating calls. The court also explicitly did not follow the precedent of Golan v. FreeEats.com, Inc., doing business as ccAdvertising et al. to reduce the exorbitant damages.

While the future of the TCPA remains uncertain pending the outcome of William P. Barr et al. v. American Association of Political Consultants, Inc. et al.—oral arguments were recently rescheduled for May 6—the likelihood of plaintiff attorneys making out like bandits will prevail.