Hi TCPAWorld!
In Dobronski v. Tony Packo’s Toledo, LLC, No. 25-cv-13117, 2026 WL 2969611 (E.D. Mich. Oct. 2, 2026), the Court granted Tony Packo’s motion to dismiss and dismissed Dobronski’s claims with prejudice. The number at issue was a business line when Dobronski says he registered it on the National DNC Registry in 2003. That made the registration void from the start, and his later switch to personal use could not fix it.
Dobronski alleged that Tony Packo’s sent him three unsolicited telemarketing text messages between May and September 2025 and failed to transmit the required caller identification with its solicitations. He described his number, (734) XXX-2300, as a “residential, non-commercial” number used for “personal, residential, and household reasons.” He alleged it has been on the National DNC Registry since 2003 and is assigned to a cellular service that is “presumptively residential.” He brought two class counts: one for sending multiple text solicitations within a 12-month period to numbers on the Registry, and one for the caller ID failure.
Tony Packo’s moved to dismiss on three grounds: (1) Dobronski lacked standing, (2) he did not plead enough facts about the texts, and (3) there is no private right of action for the caller ID claim. The standing argument failed. Tony Packo’s pointed to complaints Dobronski or his business filed in 2019 and 2020 that identified the 2300 number as a business line for the Adrian & Blissfield Rail Road Company (A&B RR), plus public records listing the same number as the contact for Teletech, Inc. Dobronski’s own earlier case in the same district did not help him. In Dobronski v. Alarm Mgmt. II, L.L.C., the court described a 2017 call to the 2300 number that was answered “Good afternoon, A&B Railroad,” and the person on the line (Dobronski’s wife Susan) explained that the number served both the railroad and Teletech. Both were for-profit companies run by Dobronski and his wife.
Dobronski did not deny the history. He conceded the number had been used for the railroad’s police department. He then declared under penalty of perjury that he “sold the railroad and retired” in August 2021, took the number back for personal use in early 2022, and has not used it for business since. His theory was that standing returned once the business use stopped. For that he relied on Shelton v. Pro. Source Lending Grp. LLC (Shelton II), where the Eastern District of Pennsylvania let a plaintiff proceed with the same number that had sunk his claims years earlier in Shelton I.
Then the Court noted that Shelton I, Shelton II, and Worsham v. Discount Power are all out-of-circuit district court decisions, and only Shelton I actually decided business use as a standing question. More to the point, being a “residential telephone subscriber” is an element of a DNC claim. When a jurisdictional attack overlaps with an element of the cause of action, the court should find jurisdiction and treat the attack as one on the merits. So the Court found jurisdiction and moved the business-use question to Rule 12(b)(6).
Moving the issue to the merits did not save Dobronski. On paper his allegations looked a lot like Shelton II: a residential number, personal use, an old registration, and presumptively residential cell service. The difference was timing. The Shelton II plaintiff registered his number in 2015, a year before he started his business, and that court flagged in a footnote that a number that was clearly a business number when registered might raise a question of whether the registration was void ab initio. That footnote describes this case. Tony Packo’s offered public records the Court could consider at the pleading stage, a 2001 FCC license and an excerpt from a 2003 Teletech financial report, showing the 2300 number was a Teletech business contact from 2001 through 2003, before the purported registration. Dobronski’s own prior lawsuits showed business use continuing through at least 2020.
The Court held that these records discredit Dobronski’s allegation that the number was eligible for registration in 2003. Business numbers cannot be registered on the DNC Registry, so the 2003 registration was void ab initio, and the Court declined to apply the usual presumption that numbers on the Registry are residential. Without a valid registration, Dobronski failed to state a claim. The Court dismissed with prejudice and did not reach Tony Packo’s remaining arguments.
The lesson here is that timing of the registration date deserves as much attention as the plaintiff’s current use of the number. Retiring and moving a number to personal use may help a plaintiff whose number was properly registered in the first place, as in Shelton II. However, it may not work for a registration that was invalid when made.
We will keep you posted, TCPAWorld!