A professional plaintiff known for filing lawsuits against collection agencies has lost a case before the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit after it upheld a lower court’s ruling that a company which contacted him could not have violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act because it was acting on behalf of the federal government.
Using a defense known as the “Yearsley” doctrine, in which the Supreme Court ruled in 1940 that the immunity that applies to the U.S. government extends to contractors working on its behalf. The Supreme Court applied Yearsley in a TCPA Case in Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez back in 2016.
A copy of the Appeals Court ruling in Cunningham v. General Dynamics Information Technology can be accessed by clicking here.
In this case, Craig Cunningham, who has filed six lawsuits against collection agencies so far this year and has filed more than 100 cases dating back as far as 2005, according to data compiled by WebRecon, sued a company for using an autodialer to contact individuals and advertising the commercial availability of health insurance. A District Court judge dismissed the case on the grounds that the defendant was immune from prosecution under the Yearsley doctrine. That ruling was appealed to the Fourth Circuit, which upheld the dismissal.
Collection agencies who are contractors with the federal government and are attempting to collect debts may want to consider this defense strategy if they are ever sued. As well, the industry can take some solace in seeing an individual who has gone to great lengths to profit off their backs spend time and effort and come away empty-handed.
