“MERITLESS” AND “UNFOUNDED”: Arizona Federal Court Chastises Circle K For Motion Seeking Reconsideration of Seclusion Ruling

Can a phone call invade one’s seclusion?

That was the question recently answered by a federal district court in D’Agostino v. Circle K, 2026 WL 1551767 (D. Az. June 2, 2026).  In fact, however the court had already previously answered this question– determining that “yes” such a claim is recognizable under Arizona law.

Well Circle K did not like that answer and asked the court to reconsider it– it did not go well.

Circle K argued, in essence, that the federal court clearly erred because although the tort of intrusion upon seclusion exists in Arizona. no state court had ever found it applied to phone calls before. Circle K suggested the federal court could not “create” law applying the doctrine in this setting.

The district court, however, had little trouble rejecting this argument– and in true smackdown fashion. As the court put it:

“This reasoning is counter to how the American legal system generally wor[k]s. Under this logic, a federal could never resolve a statelaw claim unless the facts or conduct alleged in the case had been previously brought before/ruled on by a state court. In practice, however, cases necessarily contain different facts that may support the same cause of action. The mere fact that an Arizona court has not addressed this exact set of facts as they relate to an intrusion upon seclusion claim does not bar this Court from doing so.”

Yeah…

The Court goes on to call Circle K’s motion: “meritless” and “unfounded.”

Big waste of time here by Circle K’s counsel here. The Court was obviously unimpressed and I suspect some damage to their credibility was done here.

Take aways here:

1. Just because there is no case law on a specific subject doesn’t mean the court can’t apply existing law to the factual scenario presented– this is why it is so important to have counsel that understands the law broadly and doesn’t just try to rely on GenAi tools;
2. Seeking reconsideration of an adverse ruling should be done sparingly, if ever– and never without a change in fact or law or a MAJOR miss by the court.

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Chat soon.