UKNOWN NUMBER: Mortgage One Funding Gets Beat Up In a TCPA and CEMA Ruling After Plaintiff Won’t Even Allege His Phone Number

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Law Conference of Champions Ticket Prices as I type: $379.00 (and rising)

In a TCPA class action the phone number the Plaintiff received calls on is the most basic fact needed to evaluate a claim. So it only makes sense a Plaintiff would have to allege that information to state a claim.

But in a decision out yesterday in the W.D. Wash. a court held that is not a requirement after all.

In Littman v. Mortgage One Funding, 2026 WL 3150829 (W.D. Wash. Oct. 21, 2026) Defendant moved to dismiss a TCPA class action contending the Plaintiff had failed to allege the phone number and other critical components of his claim. The Court disagreed.

Holding the Plaintiff only needed to give Defendant “fair notice” of the claim the Court determined merely alleging the Defendant made illegal telephone solicitations was sufficient– the precise contours of the claim (including the number at issue) could be sorted out in discovery.

Hmmm… I guess this depends on what you think of as “fair notice.” Depriving the defendant of the basic information needed to determine whether the allegations are true or false seems a little unfair. How is defendant supposed to answer the complaint’s allegation if they do not know what the number at issue is?

The Court also denied the motion as to Mortgage One’s claim the complaint did not otherwise state facts asserting a cause of action– accepting conclusions and vague allegations as sufficient:

Littman plausibly alleges that Mortgage One violated both the TCPA and TSA by sending him four communications in November 2025 to solicit the purchase of financial services. He need not identify every call or message that Mortgage One sent him over the past four years or provide further details at this stage. His allegations that Mortgage One contacted him without his consent, despite his phone number being listed on the Do Not Call Registry, support a reasonable inference that it contacted him to solicit financial services. 

Hmmm.

A mere allegation that a company called you despite having your number on the DNC absolutely does NOT give rise to an inference the calls were marketing calls in my view– they could have been serving calls for all we know. Disagree with this piece as well– and I suspect the Court reached this conclusion because Mortgage One had done something to piss off the judge (Troutman Amin, LLP has had favorable rulings before him and I am surprised how roughly the court treated Mortgage One here.)

Last, the Court finds the Washington CEMA claim was well plead. The CEMA bans commercial text messages without consent– and it is a VERY dangerous law and one we will need to discuss at LCOC V in detail!

Speaking of Law Conference of Champions V, prices have already nearly DOUBLED since they first went on sale for $199.00. If you haven’t obtained your tickets yet you now must pay $379.00. Sorry about that– but the good news is if you buy today you will save a TON of money because prices rise $10.00 a day so by next month tickets will be over $700.00 and by January, 2027 you’ll be paying over $1,000.00 a ticket.

If you like TCPAworld content you are going to LOVE two full days of CLE covering TCPA, CEMA, CIPA, Ai, Date Privacy– brought to you by the best in the business. The lawyers of Troutman Amin, LLP.

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Published by Eric "Czar" 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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