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Laws exist for when ethics fail, a law professor of mine used to say. With that in mind, the courts have been getting active regarding automated calling since the technology is so powerful and can become quite a problem when used improperly.

Auto dialers are extremely useful. Not only are they essential for telemarketing firms, they also can help businesses of all sizes with reaching customers on a mass scale. The problem is not auto dialer technology, it is the fact that unscrupulous businesses can potentially harass people by setting these auto dialers to call even when the calls are not wanted. Since auto dialers can run without human intervention, the only thing stopping this harassment sometimes is the courts.

Thus, all the hubbub surrounding the recent clarification of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) rules, which regulate the use of auto dialers. The clarification basically has created an uproar, as it casts an overly broad net over all devices that can dial automatically (which is a lot of devices, as it turns out).

A lot of businesses are wondering if their business processes are still legal, and so recent legal rulings have been watched closely.

One recent ruling is McKenna v. WhisperText, where a mobile application provider was sued for sending a text message invite to join the service based on the recommendation of another user of the service. In a win for reasonable people, the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, dismissed the case with prejudice and just entered judgment in favor of the defendant.

In this case, the key consideration was that another user had recommended that the invite be sent. This manual intervention removed the automated text message software from inclusion as an auto dialer under the TCPA.

The court found that the lawsuit “fails to state a claim that WhisperText used an [autodialer] to send him an unwanted message,” noting that “where an application sends SMS invitations only at the user’s affirmative direction, the action taken is with human intervention, meaning that the equipment at issue is not an [autodialer].”

Reason prevails again.