Debt Collection Autodialing Case Going to Trial

A federal judge ruled last week that debt collection efforts using an autodialer warrants a full trial, denying the defendant’s motion for summary judgment.

In a federal lawsuit, Roslyn Griffith and Jerret Cain claimed that Consumer Portfolio Services, a sub-prime auto lender, contacted their cellphones with unauthorized calls and text messages, according to Courthouse News Service. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) prohibits companies from making such contacts via an “automatic telephone dialing system.”

But Consumer Portfolio Services moved for summary judgment, arguing that its predictive-dialing technology does not run afoul of the TCPA. The company claimed that its dialer did not store or produce numbers using a “random or sequential number generator,” which is how the TCPA is worded.

U.S. District Judge John Grady, in the Northern District of Illinois, rejected the motion noting that the Federal Communications Commission has found that “a predictive dialer falls within the meaning and statutory definition of ‘automatic telephone dialing equipment’ and the intent of Congress.”

“CPS’s interpretation of FCC orders, which it supports by quoting portions of those orders out of context, is a transparent attempt to win through litigation a battle that other companies lost before the FCC,” Grady wrote in his opinion.

The judge rejected the company’s argument that a stricter interpretation of the TCPA would show that the dialer software itself had to store phone numbers to be illegal.

Although CPS is not a collection agency, and thus not subject to the FDCPA, collection agencies should pay attention to this case in making decisions on whether to use autodialers to contact cell phones.