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Court Rules Roommates are Covered by TCPA Restrictions, Too

TMCnews Featured Article


October 19, 2015

Court Rules Roommates are Covered by TCPA Restrictions, Too

By Mae Kowalke, TMCnet Contributor


The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) needs to be taken seriously by any business that makes telemarketing or automated calls. And a recent ruling by the Third Circuit Federal Court of Appeals now clarifies that businesses are on the hook regarding the TCPA even if they don’t reach the intended recipient.


In Leyse vs Bank of America National Association, the plaintiff sued under the TCPA after receiving telemarketing calls on a landline that was shared with a roommate. At first the complaint was dismissed by the lower court, since the plaintiff was not considered the “called party” under the TCPA. The call wasn’t intended for the plaintiff.

The Third Circuit reversed this ruling, however, deciding instead that although the plaintiff was not the intended recipient, he still had standing under the TCPA’s zone of interest since he was a regular user of the landline as well as an occupant of the home with the landline.

“The Act’s zone of interest encompasses more than just the intended recipients of prerecorded telemarketing calls,” the court noted in its ruling. “It is the actual recipient, intended or not, who suffers the nuisance and invasion of privacy.”

The reasoning behind the rulings, the court noted, was that if the caller intended to call one party without its consent but mistakenly called another, neither the actual recipient nor the uninjured intended recipient could sue even if the calls continued indefinitely. This, obviously, didn’t make sense because it opens the door to unlimited telemarketing calls even if the household does not want them.

So while in some measure this ruling makes sense, it also clarifies a telemarketing situation that was murky.

The ruling is an interesting one, and something that businesses should consider when encountering call recipients who are not the intended target of the call. If these callers want to be taken off the calling list, businesses need to listen.

With a good automated dialer, such call management is relatively easy. But businesses need to make sure they understand the rules so they don’t get tripped up. TCPA violations can be costly.




Edited by Rory J. Thompson







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