In a second December action (docket 3:22-cv-02048) against Citibank for violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and California’s Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, Citibank customer Daniel Shepard filed suit Tuesday in U.S. District Court for Southern California in San Diego alleging the financial services company invaded his privacy, causing damages, while trying to collect an alleged debt. A Citibank credit card customer since March 2019, the plaintiff fell on financial hardship in April and no longer was able to maintain regular monthly payments, the complaint said. After he defaulted, Citibank agents called Shepard multiple times using an automatic telephone dialing system or a recorded voice, sometimes twice daily and “sometimes every day,” said the complaint. Earlier this month, plaintiff Aurora Medrano filed a TCPA complaint (see 2212160003) against Citibank in the same court saying debt collection calls intensified even after Medrano’s lawyer sent the company a cease and desist order warning it to stop.

The Republican Committee of Chester County, in Pennsylvania’s Delaware Valley, inundated consumer Mark Fidanza with 17 text message solicitations Oct. 19, in the run-up to the Nov. 8 midterm elections, including 10 separate text messages to his cellphone in less than a single hour, alleged his Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action Wednesday (docket 2:22-cv-05185) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Fidanza deployed the opt-out option that came with the text messages, but the solicitations kept coming, even though he lives in and is registered to vote in Montgomery County, not in Chester County, said his complaint. Fidanza had no prior contact or dealings with the committee and never gave it personal information or otherwise authorized it to contact him, it said. Under FCC guidance, said his complaint, robotexts sent by political organizations using an autodialer violate the TCPA when sent without the recipient’s prior consent. He alleges the committee’s TCPA wrongdoing was negligent, knowing and willful. The committee didn’t respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

LoanDepot began placing “voluminous” solicitation calls in November to the cellphone of Vero Beach, Florida, resident Zachary Sawicki, though he never gave the company his prior consent and despite listing his number on the national do-not-call registry, in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the Florida Telephone Solicitation Act, alleged his class action Friday (docket 2:22-cv-14425) in U.S. District Court for Southern Florida in Fort Pierce. His complaint lists as John Doe co-defendants third-party vendors and agents that loanDepot hired to place outbound marketing calls to consumers on its behalf. Despite Sawicki’s requests that loanDepot cease its calls, the company “continued pounding” his cell number with solicitation calls and voice mails, including five such calls on a single day, Nov. 29, said his complaint. The calls continued even after Sawicki pressed the pound key on his phone to opt out, per loanDepot’s instructions, it said. The complaint is the second known TCPA lawsuit against the company in as many months. The earlier action, filed Oct. 21 in U.S. District Court for Western Texas in El Paso, gained some recent notoriety when loanDepot became the latest TCPA defendant to challenge the statute’s constitutionality (see 2212200014). As in previous challenges, loanDepot asserts in the Texas case that the TCPA’s punitive or statutory damages provisions violate the due process clause of the 14th Amendment and the excessive fines clause of the Eighth Amendment.

State Farm, via third parties acting on its behalf, made numerous telemarketing calls to consumer Thomas Gebka’s cellphone number to advertise the insurance company's goods and services without Gebka’s express consent, in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, alleged his amended class-action complaint Friday (docket 1:22-cv-05546) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago. State Farm’s Dec. 2 motion to dismiss Gebka’s original Oct. 10 complaint argued the plaintiff did not properly allege a do-not-call claim under the TCPA because the complaint asserted he added his residential phone number to the do-not-call registry but received the allegedly unlawful calls on his cellphone. Gebka’s amended complaint reworded the original, saying he registered his residential phone number, with 2696 as the last four digits, on the do-not-call registry, and used that number -- “assigned to a cellular telephone service” -- for residential purposes. Gebka’s original complaint listed no phone numbers on which he received the allegedly unlawful calls.

Meta didn't violate the Telephone Consumer Protection Act when it sent consumers unsolicited birthday text messages because it didn't use a TCPA-defined autodialer that randomly or sequentially generated the phone numbers in question, said a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals opinion Wednesday (docket 21-16785) affirming a lower court’s dismissal with prejudice of plaintiff Colin Brickman’s class action. Brickman argued Meta used a random or sequential number generator (RSNG) to determine the order in which the phone numbers were stored and dialed, an activity he said implicates the TCPA, said the court. He didn't argue that the RSNG actually generated the consumers’ phone numbers, which Meta got directly from Facebook customers. Meta successfully argued in the district court and again in the 9th Circuit that the TCPA-defined RSNG must actually generate the phone numbers in the first instance.

Attorneys for plaintiff Mario Vega and defendant Wells Fargo signed a joint stipulation Dec. 21 (docket 3:22-cv-01697) sending their Telephone Consumer Protection Act dispute to binding arbitration through the American Arbitration Association. Their stipulation includes a motion to stay Vega’s lawsuit until the arbitration is completed. Vega’s action is one of two cases pending in U.S. District Court for Southern California in San Diego accusing Wells Fargo of TCPA wrongdoing (see 2211210012).

Attorneys for plaintiff Catherine Migliano and for defendant Parler in Migliano’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action against the social media platform “engaged in some preliminary settlement discussions, but have not pursued the matter further, or discussed class settlement in particular,” they said in a joint scheduling report Thursday (docket 0:22-cv-61805) in U.S. District Court for Southern Florida for Fort Lauderdale. Lawyers for both sides “believe that this is a standard track case” and that all discovery should be completed by Aug. 11, said the report.

Gibson Dunn lawyers for DirecTV have nearly a dozen “nondelegable deadlines and obligations in connection with other active matters” that will prevent them from filing their opening brief in their Vance v. DirecTV appeal by the Jan. 23 deadline, said their unopposed motion Wednesday (docket 22-2041) at the 4th U.S.Circuit Court of Appeals seeking a one-week extension. Their obligations include drafting an amicus brief in a case on the scope of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that's due at the Supreme Court by Jan. 19, said the motion. DirecTV is appealing the U.S. District Court for West Virginia decision certifying the class in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act complaint as including all people in the U.S. who received calls to promote DirecTV on numbers listed on the do not call registry. DirecTV argued unsuccessfully that the district court lacked personal jurisdiction over the claims of class members who were called outside West Virginia, that individualized issues would predominate over class ones, and that the three named plaintiffs were subject to defenses that made them inadequate class representatives.

Tribune Publishing inundated consumer Ronald French with telemarketing calls to his residential phone in an attempt to get his deceased mother to renew her terminated subscription to its newspapers, and the calls persisted even after he told Tribune she had died and to stop calling, alleged his Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action Tuesday (docket 1:22-cv-07158) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago. A Tribune agent told French his mother's name would be added to an internal do-not-call list, but the calls kept coming, it said. The FCC has explained that its rules generally establish that the telemarketing party on whose behalf a solicitation is made bears ultimate responsibility for any TCPA violations, said his complaint. The FCC has repeatedly acknowledged the existence of vicarious liability under the TCPA, it said.

Plaintiff Jordan Copeland voluntarily dismissed without prejudice all Telephone Consumer Protection Act claims against Parler, effectively ending his two-month-long class-action lawsuit against the right-leaning social media platform, said a notice Monday (docket 3:22cv21243) in U.S. District Court for Northern Florida in Pensacola. His dismissal came a week after the court granted Parler’s motion to stay discovery in the case, pending the outcome of its motions to compel Copeland to arbitration or to transfer the case to U.S. District Court for Nevada.