A federal judge in California has decided it is up to a jury to determine whether a wife can revoke consent for her husband to be contacted by a collection agency for an unpaid debt and whether the wife revoked consent to be contacted by the agency on all of her unpaid accounts when she said she did not want to be contacted about her “debts” anymore.
The judge granted summary judgment in favor of the agency for an alleged violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, but denied summary judgment motions from both the plaintiff and the defendant related to alleged violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and also denied a summary judgment motion from the defendant for another alleged violation of the FDCPA and an alleged violation of the Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
A copy of the ruling in Jara v. GC Services can be accessed by clicking here.
BACKGROUND
Arnoldo Jara and his wife Maria each had unpaid credit card accounts that were placed with the defendant. Maria Jara had outstanding balances on three cards and Arnoldo Jara had an outstanding balance on one card. Each consented to be contacted on their mobile phones by an automated telephone dialing system and/or a pre-recorded voice and provided the same contact phone number.
When contacted by the defendant, Maria Jara on a number of occasions revoked consent to be contacted. She believed she was revoking consent to be contacted for all of the accounts that had been placed with the defendant. The defendant believed she was only revoking consent to be contacted for that particular debt.
For example, during one conversation when contacted about one of her accounts, Maria Jara said, “I would really want you to stop calling me and as soon – about my debts.” When asked to confirm that she did not want to be contacted on that number, Maria Jara replied, “Yes.”
“Not today, not tomorrow, never,” the defendant’s representative asked. “You don’t want us to call you ever again on this number[?]”
“No,” she replied.
In a separate conversation about a different account, Maria Jara asked to have the defendant stop “calling me about my accounts.” When asked to confirm that she was seeking to have the defendant no longer contact her, she replied, “Yes.”
When the defendant attempted to contact Arnoldo Jara about his unpaid account, Maria Jara tried to revoke consent to be contacted.
RULING
The judge in this case, Judge Otis D. Wright, ruled that when Maria Jara used words like “debts” and “accounts,” create “issues of fact” as to whether consent was revoked and is “sufficient for a reasonable jury to find” that the defendant knew or had reason to know that consent had been revoked.
Arnold Jara testified that his wife had his approval to to speak with the defendant about his account and that testimony is a question “for the jury,” Judge Wright ruled.
On some of the occasions GC Services called, it initially requested to speak with Mr. Jara, and then pivoted when Mrs. Jara explained that he was away. The jury could interpret these facts to show Mrs. Jara revoked consent for Mr. Jara’s account because GC Services initially placed the call intending to reach Mr. Jara.
