UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 11-2390

MICHAEL C. WORSHAM,

Plaintiff – Appellant,

v.

ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE MANAGEMENT, INC.,

Defendant – Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of 

Maryland, at Baltimore. James K. Bredar, District Judge. 

(1:10-cv-03051-JKB)

Argued: October 25, 2012 Decided: November 14, 2012

Before SHEDD, DAVIS, and WYNN, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

ARGUED: Michael Craig Worsham, Forest Hill, Maryland, for 

Appellant. John Curtis Lynch, TROUTMAN SANDERS, LLP, Virginia 

Beach, Virginia, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Elizabeth S. Flowers, 

TROUTMAN SANDERS, LLP, Virginia Beach, Virginia, for Appellee. 

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:

Michael Worsham brought this action against Accounts 

Receivable Management, Inc. (“ARM”), alleging violations of the 

Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”) and the Maryland

Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“MTCPA”). After both parties 

moved for summary judgment, the district court granted summary 

judgment for ARM. Worsham now appeals, and for the following 

reasons, we affirm.

I.

ARM is a debt-collection company that was trying to locate 

a debtor, Martha Bucheli,1 who is Worsham’s sister-in-law. 

During ARM’s efforts to locate Bucheli, it discovered Worsham’s 

phone number as a possible contact for Bucheli. ARM called 

Worsham’s phone number approximately ten times in late May 2010. 

Worsham answered only two of these phone calls, and both times 

he heard a prerecorded message telling him to press “1” if he 

were Martha and “2” if he were not Martha. On one of these 

occasions, Worsham pressed “2” and upon hearing more prompts and 

options, he hung up the phone. On the other occasion, Worsham 

hung up the phone without pressing “2” to indicate he was not 

 1 This name is spelled “Bucheli” in some parts of the record 

and “Buceli” in other parts. We use “Bucheli” in this opinion.
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Bucheli. At no point did Worsham speak to a live representative 

from ARM.

Based on these phone calls, Worsham filed suit in state 

court, alleging violations of the FDCPA, 15 U.S.C. § 1692 et 

seq., the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”), 47 

U.S.C. § 227, and the MTCPA, Md. Code, CL § 14-3201 et seq., as 

well as asserting a state-law invasion of seclusion claim. ARM

removed the case to federal court, and after cross-motions for 

summary judgment, the district court granted ARM’s motion and 

denied Worsham’s motion. Worsham appeals the grant of summary 

judgment for ARM on his FDCPA claims and MTCPA claim.

II.

We review a grant of summary judgment de novo, “applying 

the same legal standards as the district court.” Pueschel v. 

Peters, 577 F.3d 558, 563 (4th Cir. 2009). Summary judgment 

should be granted if “the pleadings, depositions, answers to 

interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the 

affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to 

any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a 

judgment as a matter of law.” Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 

U.S. 317, 322 (1986). At this stage, we must view the evidence 

in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. Durham v. 

Horner, 690 F.3d 183, 188 (4th Cir. 2012).
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III.

A.

Worsham appeals the grant of summary judgment for ARM on 

three counts under the FDCPA, based on 15 U.S.C. §§ 1692b(3), 

1692c(b), and 1692d(6), claiming that ARM’s phone calls violated 

the statute. We disagree.

1.

We first address Worsham’s claim under 15 U.S.C. § 1692b.2

 

Although third parties may understandably find debt-collection 

calls bothersome or inconvenient, Congress has allowed debt 

collectors to call third parties on multiple occasions in 

certain instances. See 15 U.S.C. § 1692b. When communicating 

with a third party, the debt collector shall “not communicate 

with any such person more than once . . . unless the debt 

collector reasonably believes that the earlier response of such 

person is . . . incomplete and that such person now has . . .

complete location information.” Id. § 1692b(3). The use of the 

word “reasonably” indicates that this is an objective standard 

that the debt collector must meet to avoid liability under the 

FDCPA. Cf. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 283 cmt. 3 (1965) 

(observing that the “reasonable man” standard in tort-law 

 2 Because it is not necessary to our decision, we do not 

decide whether ARM’s phone calls constitute “communications” 

under 15 U.S.C. § 1692a(2).
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negligence is “an objective and external one, rather than that 

of the individual judgment, good or bad, of the particular 

individual”). 

Here, Worsham’s complaint alleges that he heard “more 

prompts and options” after he pressed “2” to indicate that he 

was not Martha. J.A. 9. Based on this fact, a reasonable 

person would believe that Worsham’s response to the call was 

incomplete. Furthermore, a reasonable person would believe that 

Worsham would have knowledge of Bucheli’s location at the time 

of a later call based on his number appearing as a possible 

contact for Bucheli. Nothing in the record contradicts these 

facts, and Worsham cannot now contradict his own pleadings to 

create a genuine issue of material fact. See, e.g., Schott 

Motorcycle Supply, Inc. v. Am. Honda Motor Co., Inc., 976 F.2d 

58, 61 (1st Cir. 1992) (observing that a “plaintiff should not 

be allowed to contradict its express factual assertion in an 

attempt to avoid summary judgment”); Bellefonte Re Ins. Co. v. 

Argonaut Ins. Co., 757 F.2d 523, 528 (2d Cir. 1985) (“A party’s 

assertion of fact in a pleading is a judicial admission by which 

it normally is bound throughout the course of the proceeding.”). 

Accordingly, § 1692b(3) allowed ARM to continue calling Worsham 

until it reasonably believed that it had received a complete 

response, so ARM’s additional phone calls did not violate the 

statute.
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2.

Worsham’s second FDCPA claim is based on 15 U.S.C. §

1692c(b). This section provides:

Except as provided in section 1692b of this title, 

without the prior consent of the consumer given 

directly to the debt collector, or the express 

permission of a court of competent jurisdiction, or as 

reasonably necessary to effectuate a postjudgment 

judicial remedy, a debt collector may not communicate, 

in connection with the collection of any debt, with 

any person other than the consumer, his attorney, a 

consumer reporting agency if otherwise permitted by 

law, the creditor, the attorney of the creditor, or 

the attorney of the debt collector.

15 U.S.C. § 1692c(b) (emphasis added). This section explicitly 

exempts from liability any calls permitted under § 1692b. 

Because ARM’s calls were permitted under § 1692b, those calls 

cannot give rise to liability under § 1692c(b). Thus, summary 

judgment was properly granted for ARM on this claim.

3.

Worsham’s third FDCPA claim faces the same problem. 

Section 1692d(6) provides:

A debt collector may not engage in any conduct the 

natural consequence of which is to harass, oppress, or 

abuse any person in connection with the collection of 

a debt. Without limiting the general application of 

the foregoing, the following conduct is a violation of 

this section . . . . Except as provided in section 

1692b of this title, the placement of telephone calls 

without meaningful disclosure of the caller’s 

identity.
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Id. § 1692d(6) (emphasis added). Like § 1692c(b), § 1692d(6) 

expressly exempts from liability calls permitted under § 1692b. 

As we have discussed, ARM’s calls were permitted under § 1692b. 

Summary judgment was therefore properly granted for ARM on this 

claim as well.

B.

Finally, we turn to Worsham’s MTCPA claim. In an earlier

suit filed by Worsham, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals 

dealt with this same state-law claim under the MTCPA. See

Worsham v. Ehrlich, 957 A.2d 161 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 2008). 

There, the Maryland court explicitly held that the MTCPA did not 

create the cause of action based on an alleged violation of 47 

C.F.R. § 64.1200(b), the same cause of action that Worsham 

alleges here. Id. at 171–72. Although the question of whether 

the MTCPA creates this cause of action has not been answered by 

Maryland’s highest court, we nevertheless see no reason to 

reject the determination of the state’s intermediate appellate

court that this cause of action does not exist under state law, 

particularly in light of the fact that Worsham was the plaintiff 

in that case. See United States v. King, 673 F.3d 274, 279 (4th 

Cir. 2012) (“If the highest court of the state has not decided 

an issue of state law, we generally defer to the state’s 

intermediate appellate courts on the issue.”). Based on the 

decision of the Maryland Court of Special Appeals in Worsham v. 
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Ehrlich, summary judgment was properly granted for ARM on 

Worsham’s MTCPA claim.

IV.

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the order granting 

summary judgment for ARM.

AFFIRMED