ANOTHER MISS: Medicare Health Advisors Loses Summary Judgment Bid As Court Rejects “Hearsay” Jornaya Record After Defense Lawyers Wholly Fail to Authenticate Records in TCPA Class Action

I am commonly asked whether Jornaya or Trusted Form records are admissible in court.

If handled properly the may be. Handled improperly they definitely are not.

In Toby Hoy v. Medicare Health Advisors, 2026 WL 2622653 (S.D. Iowa Aug. 7, 2026) the defense lawyers showed precisely what NOT to do– lobbing inadmissible consent records at the court without authentication or explanation as to why the hearsay rule can be overcome. The result– a loss on summary judgment that probably could have been a win.

In Hoy the Defendant bought leads from Inbounds/Data Prosper and used call center Virtual Buddy 24/7 to call the data and provide transfers. The Plaintiff claimed she received prerecorded calls from Defendant without consent. Defendant claimed the calls were live voice calls and were made with consent. It moved for summary judgment but the court refused to toss the case.

The defendant had recordings of the calls that took place after the transfer–but not the recording of the actual calls made by Virtual Buddy. As such the Court denied Defendant’s summary judgment on the 227(b) prerecorded call claims because Hoy’s theory is “[t]he robot comes first, the live agents come after, and the recording produced only capture the live agent portion of the call, not the robot portion.” Good enough to go to the jury.

On the issue of consent things really went off the rails. The defense apparently had a lead record with a Jornaya certificate but failed to authenticate the records or argue an appropriate exception to the hearsay rule:

First, “[t]he lead record and Verisk report are out of court statements, generated by Inbounds, ArcaMax, and Verisk, layered one atop another, offered for the truth of the matters they assert” and “[n]o witness with personal knowledge has authenticated them.”…  The documents Medicare Health Advisors put forth to
suggest it reasonably relied on the acquired leads are hearsay because they are being offered for the truth of the matter asserted
—that Hoy visited certain websites and consented to the pop-up consent contained within. Though Medicare Health Advisors
makes no arguments regarding the admissibility of the documents, the Court notes the documents may be admissible under
Rule 803(6). Fed. R. Evid. 803(6). However, Medicare Health Advisors offers no declaration of an individual with knowledge
sufficient to lay the foundation for any hearsay exception. The Court is therefore precluded from weighing these documents in
considering Medicare Health Advisors’ motion for summary judgment.

Eesh. Get it?

This court likely would have considered the records had they been properly authenticated but the defense failed to submit needed affidavits and arguments to tie this together.

Notably this is NOT hard to pull off. Not sure what happened here but a major mistake was made in my view.

The Court also found the defendant lacked a viable DNC bona fide error defense because it could not show that Virtual Buddy was required to follow its internal DNC policies or was trained on those policies. Not good.

Still some pretty helpful language here from the ruling:

While courts have not required written procedures “to be memorialized in a single, internal document,” courts have required
“evidence of a comprehensive, internal document that constitutes its policies and procedures regarding compliance with the
national DNC rules. The training slide deck does contain within it a written policy of adding individuals who do not wish to be called to the internal
registry, or to direct them to the national registry, and to not re-engage with the caller or attempt to persuade them to stay on
Medicare Health Advisors’ call list. ECF No. 46-3 at APPX_056. While this training deck is far from the most robust or formal
policy, it is a written procedure for ensuring its callers comply with the regulation and therefore satisfies the written policy
requirement as it relates to the subset of Medicare Health Advisors callers who participated in this training.

Sets a pretty low bar. Something for folks to keep in mind.

Take aways:

1. If you are buy transfers you are buying massive risk. You don’t know what took place before the call was transferred to you– yet you are on the hook for those calls in most courts;
2. Courts will be forgiving on the formalities with your DNC policies as long as you have SOMETHING in writing– but you must make sure all vendors/BPOs/transfer partners are adhering to those policies if you want to take advantage of the BFE defense; and
3. Said it before and will say it again– make sure you hire lawyers to defend you in TCPA class actions that actually understand TCPA class actions. The defense here failed to submit key evidence and arguments that likely cost them a win. Now the defense is facing a jury and potential class certification. Millions on the line. Just terrible.

Also have you caught episode 49 of the Deserve to Win Podcast yet? This week we welcome Convoso CEO Nima Hakimi to the show to talk outbound dialer compliance and tips to avoid spam and scam labels! Critical stuff.

Chat soon.