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Anyone who’s in the business of calling prospects to make a sale is aware of the current kerfuffle surrounding auto-dialers. Simply put, the Telephone Consumer Protect Act, or TCPA, has imposed strict limits on what kinds of calls can be made to private phones, especially if the phone-owners have not agreed to receive such calls.

But the interpretation of the law is coming under close scrutiny, with lawsuits being filed across the country challenging those definitions. Now social messaging giant Twitter (News - Alert) has joined the fray.

According to a blog post from law firm Klein, Moynihan, Turco (KMT), Twitter recently submitted a motion to dismiss a TCPA class action lawsuit pending against it in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

“Among other issues addressed in Nunes v. Twitter, Inc., Twitter has attacked the plaintiff's proposed definition of an automatic telephone dialing system (‘ATDS’) within the meaning of the TCPA,” wrote KMT’s David O. Klein. “The debate over what constitutes an ATDS has been raging in federal district courts throughout the nation. Twitter's most recent motion strongly attacks a recent California holding that classifies an ATDS quite broadly.”

As everyone familiar with it knows, Twitter users can sign up to receive tweets by text messages on their cells.  Although Twitter never identifies in its motion how it sends texts to its members, it says that it does not use an ATDS.  “In this case, the plaintiff's cell phone number formerly belonged to a Twitter user before the number was recycled and assigned to the plaintiff, who is not a Twitter user,” Klein wrote. And that’s where the problem started.

Twitter says it doesn’t use an ATDS; the woman getting the calls doesn’t care; she says she’s being harassed, and filed suit to stop them.  (The full blog can be read HERE.)

How this all plays out remains to be seen, but there is a cautionary tale inherent in this case, and others like it. No longer can companies just make calls with impunity. The courts have woken up, and are now looking carefully at every instance. Hence, calling companies need to proceed carefully.