The “Protecting American Consumers from Robocalls Act” allegedly protects consumers from unwanted telemarketing calls– but really it is just a gift to the plaintiff’s bar. Indeed it would be better entitled the “Endangering Small Businesses With Frivolous Litigation Act.”
Here’s what I mean.
The Act would do two things– of them secretly designed to encourage class action litigation under the TCPA.
First, the act would remove the word “residential” from the DNC list regulations. That word has existed in the regs since 1992 and was inserted directly to address the policy concerns that animated Congress to pass the TCPA in the first place.
So why drop it now 34 years later?
The Plaintiff’s bar was recently struck with a “killshot” for TCPA DNC class actions. The Courts are now finding that whether a phone is residential is a critical INDIVIDUALIZED issue that prevents class litigation. Indeed at least one court has struck a class action at the pleadings stage on this ground. Translation– if the word “‘residential” stays in the statute the lucrative TCPA class action industry–ntting Plaintiff’s lawyers HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS each year– dries up.
So with the help of the plaintiff’s bar’s lobbying arm–the NCLC– Congress has decided to “fix” this for the plaintiff’s bar. Now the sponsors of the bill claim this change will help small business– INSANE! It will DESTROY small business. More abusive litigation. More expensive lawsuits. More demand letters. Its just awful. And since every small business wants to contact customers and near customers pretty much every small business is at risk if this bill passes.
Terrible!
The second piece of the bill might be even worse.
Anyone familiar with the TCPA recalls the days when the statute was broadly applied to all automated dialers in 2015-2018. This was a nightmare for callers who were constantly subject to attack with BILLIONS in risk at lawsuits based on a statute that was only supposed to apply to bad-guy randomfire robocallers. Instead VEERY BUSINESS became a “TCPA violator in waiting.”
This is bad for everyone except plaintiff’s lawyers.
Well guess what– Congress, at the behest of those lawyers, are set to make this litigation easier to bring by expanding the TCPA’s ATDS definition to mirror that used back in 2018.
Complete disaster.
But this is what happens when your congressmen are puppets who are bought and paid for by the plaintiff’s bar.
Support Troutman for America and get a guy in office who can actually HELP STOP ROBOCALLS AND ABUSIVE LAWSUITS AT THE SAME TIME!!
Donate now– or just, you know, hope things get better on their own. 🙂
Chat soon.
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Let me help you with why residential is meaningless. Not sure if you have noticed but over the last 34 years, phone service has changed. Where once each household typically had 1 landline, now each household typically has no landlines and each person has a cell phone. That cell phone is their only phone and it is very often used for work since a decent number of workers, both self employed and work from home, only use that one phone. I never understood why when an overseas call center using a spoofed number, calling about an auto warranty or final expense insurer, calling a “residential” line that is a violation but if its a line that at times is used for work, or even paid for by a business, that is not a violation.