A District Court judge in Indiana has granted a defendant’s motion for summary judgment in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action, ruling that even though the plaintiff continued to receive text messages from a debt collector after she had revoked consent to be contacted, the technology used by the defendant did not meet the definition of an automated telephone dialing system.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Lanteri v. Credit Protection Association can be accessed by clicking here.
The case had been stayed pending the outcome of Gadelhak v. AT&T Services in the Seventh Circuit, which ruled in February that technology that does not have the capacity to generate random or sequential numbers does not meet the definition of an ATDS under the TCPA.
There is a lot to unpack in this ruling with the judge granting and denying portions of summary judgment motions from both sides, but tossing the TCPA class action is the most important part of Judge Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson’s 36-page ruling.
A class of more than 4,300 members had previously been certified in the case, alleging they received more than 6,500 text messages after telling the defendants to stop sending them.
Looking at the system and processes used by the defendant in sending the text messages to the plaintiffs, Judge Magnus-Stinson ruled it does not meet the definition of an ATDS under the Seventh Circuit’s ruling.
“Regardless of whether the point has been conceded, though, the Court concludes that summary judgment in favor of Defendants on the Class’s TCPA claim is appropriate because the evidence shows that the SoundBite system is not an ATDS under the definition that now controls,” she wrote.
