A defendant has won a recommendation of summary judgment in a lawsuit accusing it of violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by texting a consumer about an unpaid medical debt and allegedly failing to send a validation notice.
The background: The case stems from a debt the plaintiff incurred following an emergency room visit to a healthcare provider in January 2023.
- The healthcare provider assigned the debt to the defendant for collection in September 2023. Three days later, the defendant placed a request with its mailing vendor to send a validation notice to the plaintiff’s address, and the vendor confirmed the letter was sent two days after that.
- Between October 2024 and January 2025, the defendant sent the plaintiff seven text messages about the outstanding debt.
- The plaintiff, representing himself, sued in Delaware state court, alleging the defendant used an automatic telephone dialing system and prerecorded messages in violation of the TCPA and failed to identify the debt as required by the FDCPA. The defendant removed the case to federal court, and the plaintiff later agreed to dismiss the prerecorded message claim.
- The plaintiff has filed at least three other lawsuits over allegedly illegal calls and texts, and at one point texted the defendant, “wow you really like being sued. 1500 for each text you send.”
The ruling: Magistrate Judge Eleanor G. Tennyson of the District Court for the District of Delaware recommended granting the defendant’s motion for summary judgment on both remaining claims.
- On the TCPA claim, the judge relied on the Third Circuit’s ruling in Panzarella v. Navient Solutions, which held that a caller must actually use a system’s capacity to generate random or sequential numbers to violate the statute. Whether the defendant’s equipment had that capacity was irrelevant, because the plaintiff offered no evidence he was contacted “in anything but a targeted manner.” The texts went to his number, and only his number, about his own account.
- The plaintiff pointed to skip-trace requests, third-party phone number appends, and six or seven numbers associated with him in the defendant’s records, but the judge found none of it amounted to more than a “scintilla of evidence” of random or sequential dialing.
- On the FDCPA claim, the judge noted the statute requires only that a validation notice be sent, not that the consumer actually receive it. The defendant’s business records, backed by an affidavit from its director of consumer affairs, showed the letter was mailed to the plaintiff’s admittedly correct address and was never returned as undeliverable.
- The plaintiff’s sworn denial that he ever received the letter was “of no import,” and the judge found no legal requirement that a collector produce USPS Intelligent Mail barcode data to prove a letter was mailed.
- In a footnote, the judge observed that the plaintiff’s lawsuits “border upon frivolous” and amount to a significant waste of court and party resources.
