SANDERS CAMPAIGN NOW ALSO A TCPA TARGET

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It was just last week that TCPAWorld reported on the abortive effort of the President Trump’s re-election to escape potential Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) liability for texting cellphones without consent (https://tcpaworld.com/2020/06/09/trump-campaign-fails-to-escape-tcpas-clutches/). Now, in the spirit of bipartisanship, the same counsel have brought a similar class action in the same Minnesota Federal Court against Bernie 2020 Inc., the campaign organization of former Democratic Presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders.

In Jacob Buller and Cody Olson v. Bernie 2020 Inc., Case No. 20-cv-01368-ECT-TNL, United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, filed June 15, 2020, the plaintiffs contend that in October 2019 each received a text message on their respective cellphones inviting them to view the Senator’s latest campaign ad on YouTube. Neither plaintiff had provided their express consent. Further, the complaint asserts that the texts, which were identical and generic in nature except for the plaintiffs’ first names, were sent using an automated telephone dialing system (ATDS) and constituted, prerecorded calls under the TCPA. So now Cody Olson and Connor Olson, a plaintiff in the Trump suit, have something else in common other than their last names.

The case has been assigned to Judge Eric C. Tostrud and referred initially to Magistrate Judge Tony N. Leung. Plaintiffs may have been hoping to draw Chief Judge John Tunheim, who in his June 8 decision in the Trump case agreed that an ATDS could include “equipment that has the specified capacity to generate numbers and dial them without human intervention regardless of whether the numbers called are randomly or sequentially generated or come from calling lists.”(emphasis supplied). In any case, the complaint dutifully points out Judge Tunheim’s decision on that key issue, the significance of which TCPAWorld has analyzed as well (https://tcpaworld.com/2020/06/09/avoidable-disaster-trump-campaigns-strange-decision-to-challenge-atds-allegations-at-pleadings-stage-leads-to-marks-being-adopted-in-d-minn-for-the-first-time/).

So will any other Presidential campaigns be TCPA targets in Minnesota? Perhaps they are checking their call lists for any potential voters name Olson.

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Published by Eric J. Troutman

The Czar of TCPAWorld Eric Troutman is one of the country’s prominent class action defense lawyers and is nationally recognized in Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) litigation and compliance. He has served as lead defense counsel in more than 70 national TCPA class actions and has litigated nearly a thousand individual TCPA cases in his role as national strategic litigation counsel for major banks and finance companies. He also helps industry participants build TCPA-compliant processes, policies, and systems. Eric has built a national litigation practice based upon deep experience, rigorous analysis and extraordinary responsiveness. Eric and his team feel equally at home litigating multibillion dollar telecommunications class actions in federal court as they do developing and executing national litigation strategies for institutions facing an onslaught of individual TCPA matters. They thrive in each of these roles – delivering consistently excellent results – while never losing sight of the client experience. While many firms now tout TCPA expertise, Eric has been there from the beginning. He built one of the country’s first TCPA-only defense teams and began serving as national TCPA counsel for his clients nearly a decade ago. This perspective allows him to swiftly develop the right litigation strategies for dealing with recurring problems, without wasting time on tactics that are bound to fail. Eric’s rich historical perspective and encyclopedic knowledge of the TCPA landscape also make him an invaluable resource to institutional compliance teams struggling to comply with the shifting regulatory landscape. No task is too small – or too big. Indeed, Eric and his team have helped build TCPA-compliant systems and processes for some of the largest and most complex corporate entities in the country. He commonly works with in-house compliance counsel to build and implement enterprise and business-line specific TCPA solutions, performs TCPA audits and drafts and reviews proposed TCPA policies and procedures. He and his team also have the technical expertise necessary to assist call centers seeking to develop TCPA-resistant call path architecture or to modify existing telephony and software integration to better insulate from potential TCPA exposure. Eric has built a reputation for thought leadership. An avid blogger and speaker, he has been at the forefront of the industry’s effort to push for clarity and a return to sanity for the TCPA for years. He was selected to advocate for the financial services industry on important TCPA issues before the Federal Communications Commission and co-authored the nation’s only comprehensive practice guide on TCPA defense. In his spare time, Eric leads defense teams representing banks and other financial services companies in consumer finance litigation matters. He has experience representing clients in UCC, TILA, RESPA FCRA, CCRA, CLRA, FDCPA, RFDCPA and FCCPA claims, as well as in fraud and bank operations issues.

2 Comments

  1. Isn’t it the case that political parties are excepted from TCPA compliance regulations for consent?

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