A New Jersey appeals court has affirmed a lower court’s ruling denying certification of a class in a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act lawsuit, on the grounds the plaintiff did not have enough evidence that the proposed members of the class received the message in question from the defendant.
The background: The plaintiff allegedly received voicemail messages from the defendant failed to comply with the FDCPA because they did not identify the caller as a debt collector or that the message was a communication attempting to collecting on a debt. T
- The complaint sought to certify a class of more than 2,400 New Jersey consumers who allegedly received similar voicemails.
- However, aside from referencing the defendant’s call script and asserting that thousands of individuals were affected, the plaintiff did not provide concrete evidence showing that the messages were uniformly delivered or that the putative class members actually received them.
- The trial court denied certification, finding that the plaintiff failed to satisfy three of the four requirements for class actions: numerosity, commonality, and typicality.
The ruling: The appeals court agreed, concluding that the plaintiff’s assertions were too speculative and lacked evidentiary support.
- In its opinion, the appellate panel wrote that while a class of 2,400 consumers would generally meet the threshold for numerosity, “plaintiff offered no proofs that the putative members received messages from defendant or the content of those alleged messages”.
- On commonality and typicality, the court echoed the same concern: there was no evidence that other consumers experienced the same alleged violation. “Simply put, plaintiff’s conclusory assertions are insufficient to satisfy the burden of proof regarding numerosity, commonality, and typicality,” the opinion stated.
