3rd Circuit Upholds Dismissal of TCPA Case in Pa.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals weighed in on the use of automatic telephone dialing systems (ATDS), upholding the dismissal of a Telephone Consumer Protection Act lawsuit against debt collector Navient, though on different grounds than those cited by…
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a lower court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Elizabeth and Joshua Panzarella sued Navient, claiming the company called their cellphones without prior express consent using an ATDS, in an attempt to collect a student loan held by a family member. The district court granted summary judgment for Navient, concluding “Navient’s dialing technology did not qualify as an ATDS under section 227(a)(1) of the TCPA because it viewed a particular component of Navient’s dialing technology as separate from its dialing system,” said the Tuesday decision by Judge Marjorie Rendell. The lower court “erred by failing to consider whether Navient’s dialing ‘equipment’ as a whole qualified as an ATDS,” she wrote: “Even though we do not decide whether Navient’s dialing equipment qualified as an ATDS, we find that Navient did not use an ATDS in violation of the TCPA when it called the Panzarellas. Thus, we will affirm the District Court’s order on this alternative ground.” In Facebook v. Duguid decided last year the Supreme Court sided with Facebook (see 2104010063), favoring a narrow definition of what constitutes an ATDS.