CTIA, U.S. Chamber, Seek Further Restrictions on TCPA Lawsuits
CTIA supported arguments by United Healthcare Services that a company should not be held liable for violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) for autodialed and prerecorded calls after a wireless subscriber’s phone number has changed. United Healthcare had complained that sometimes a subscriber gives prior express consent for a company to make a call, but then the subscriber’s number is changed to another person’s phone. In February, the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau sought comment (http://bit.ly/1i6pAfm).
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"While the Commission should not limit the ability of consumers to hold bad actors accountable for illegal calls, the Commission should grant narrowly tailored relief designed to reduce the current onslaught of frivolous litigation against companies that otherwise act in good faith to comply with both the letter and the spirit of the TCPA,” CTIA said (http://bit.ly/1cRl59K).
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce told the FCC that telephone companies recycle 37 million telephone numbers each year and there’s no way to completely avoid calling a reassigned number. “To avoid inadvertently dialing a customer’s phone number -- where consent has been obtained -- that has been reassigned to someone else, a business or organization would potentially need to verify the subscriber information for each number before placing every autodialed or prerecorded call,” the Chamber said (http://bit.ly/1kiVSVr). “It would be nonsensical for a statute intended to reduce unwanted communications to require companies to repeatedly reach out to consumers to determine if their phone numbers have changed."
Businesses should not be punished for making calls “they believe, reasonably and in good faith, to be consensual and therefore permitted under the TCPA,” said Time Warner Cable (http://bit.ly/1kMD7wd). “As the Commission is undoubtedly aware, the number of TCPA lawsuits has exploded in recent years, as plaintiffs’ lawyers continue to invent new theories of liability that Congress and the Commission never intended to allow.”