Debt collector can be sued for autodialed cell phone calls, rules 7th Circuit

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A debt collector may have violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act when its automated dialing system contacted cell phone users with reassigned numbers, the 7th Circuit has ruled in affirming judgment.

The defendant is a debt collector that uses an automated dialing system to contact debtors. The plaintiffs in the case are two cell phone users who received collection calls from the defendant 18 and 29 times, respectively.

The plaintiffs were not actual debtors but had received the automated calls because their cell phone numbers had previously been held by debtors before being reassigned.

The plaintiffs filed a class action against the defendant under the TCPA. While the Act is best known for imposing liability for junk fax transmissions, the statute also prohibits the use of automated dialing systems to place cell phone calls to consumers who have not consented to their receipt.

The defendant argued that it had no liability under the Act because the consent given by the original holders of the cell phone numbers carried over when those numbers were reassigned to the plaintiffs.

The court disagreed, explaining “there can’t be any long-term consent to call a given cell number, because no one … has a property right in a phone number. Consent to call a given number must come from its current subscriber. [The defendant] implicitly acknowledges this by saying that the current subscriber can rescind any earlier consent to call cell number. But this really means that customer’s authority to give consent, and thus any consent previously given, lapses when cell number is reassigned.”

U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit. Soppet v. Enhanced Recovery Co., No. 11-3819.