A District Court judge in Nevada has preemptively dismissed a plaintiff’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act claim against a defendant that was attempting to contact the plaintiff to collect on an unpaid debt, ruling essentially that the likelihood of randomly or sequentially receiving calls to collect on a specific debt os “implausible.”
A copy of the ruling in the case of McDonald v. Navy Federal Financial Group can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff had submitted an application to proceed in forma pauperis, which indicates the plaintiff is not able to pay the fees associated with filing a lawsuit in federal court. While granting the application, Judge Elayna J. Youchah of the District Court for the District of Nevada also screened the complaint, reviewing each of the claims being made by the plaintiff. One of the claims is that the defendant violated the TCPA by using an automated telephone dialing system to contact her in attempting to collect on an unpaid debt.
The alleged TCPA violation was one of several claims made by the plaintiff, many of which were dismissed by Judge Youchah for failing to state a claim.
The plaintiff claimed that if she ever provided consent to the defendant to be contacted on her cell phone, she revoked that consent by telling a representative of the defendant to stop calling her. But the plaintiff claimed the defendant continued to make calls to try and collect on the unpaid debt.
Because the plaintiff was receiving calls from the defendant in relation to an unpaid debt, her allegation that she was being called randomly or using a sequential number generator is “implausible,” Judge Youchah wrote. The defendant was not generating the phone numbers randomly or sequentially, the judge ruled, so she dismissed the plaintiff’s TCPA claim without prejudice.
