ANOTHER STANDING WIN: Court Finds Receipt of a Single Ringless Voicemail Causes No Harm-Dismisses Case

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So ringless voicemail cases continue to generate diverse results in TCPAWorld.

As readers know, Squire’s TCPA team had a HUGE win recently when a STATE court determined that a case involving a single RVM could not be litigated for lack of standing. That was a first in the nation result folks.

But today another FEDERAL court found that a single RVM did not cause harm and granted a defendant’s motion to dismiss. Interestingly, however, the plaintiff’s own deposition testimony was used to seal the dismissal.

In Matthew Dickson, Plaintiffs, v. Direct Energy, LP, et al , CASE NO: 5:18CV182, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 54750 (N.D. Oh.  March 25, 2022) the Court granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss for lack of standing finding that a single RVM did not cause Plaintiff any harm.

In Dickson the RVM had apparently never been listened to, just transcribed and read. As a result the Court found it was similar to the receipt of a single text message, which the court viewed as unlikely to cause harm following Hanna.

Plus the Court credited the deposition testimony to the effect that no harm was caused:

Dickson cannot recall where he was or what he was doing when he received the RVM. His only recollection appears to be that at one point in time he read the RVM and subsequently forwarded it on to counsel because he had previous experience with the TCPA.

What remarkable testimony. The guy received the RVM and immediately forwarded it to a lawyer!

The Court distinguished other cases where a Plaintiff had been harmed by even a single RVM:

Unlike the defendant in Silbaugh, Defendant here has successfully refuted the contention that Dickson was charged for the RVM or lost use of his phone upon his receipt of the RVM. Accordingly, Dickson’s sole alleged harm appears to be the de minimus time he took to read the RVM, a time so limited that he did not even recall its contents.

So case dismissed.

While this is another great standing ruling, users of ringless voicemail technology should not get confued here. RVMs are definitely subject to the TCPA. However some courts find that receipt of a single RVM does not cause any harm. That is not a universal conclusion, however. The outcome will turn on the specific facts of each case.

So blasting folks with RVM without consent is highly inadvisable…

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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.

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