A District Court judge in Washington has certified two classes in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act case against a healthcare provider that was accused of violating the statute by making calls using an artificial or prerecorded voice to individuals that had not provided their consent to receive calls and by making calls to individuals whose accounts had been flagged as those not to be called.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Samson v. United Healthcare can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff began receiving calls from the defendant in 2018 when he received a new cell phone number. The plaintiff informed the defendant it had the wrong number when he received the calls and asked the defendant to stop calling him and remove his number from their lists. The calls continued. The plaintiff alleges he received calls from three different teams within the defendant’s operation, including the Medicare and Retirement Collections team. The different teams used different telephony systems and technology to make their calls and leave their messages.
The plaintiff filed suit, and sought to include two classes of plaintiffs — those who were wrong number calls and those who were on the company’s do-not-call lists. The defendant argued the just because an individual was a wrong number or was on the do-not-call list does not meet the threshold for whether the plaintiff had provided or revoked consent to be contacted. The only way to determine that, the defendant argued, was on a case-by-case basis.
But Judge Marsha J. Pechman of the District Court for the Western District of Washington ruled that the “objective” definitions used by the provider do not create “fail-safe” classes and also rejected the defendant’s argument that the plaintiff had standing to sue.
