Source: https://www.pepperlaw.com/publications/district-court-offers-clarification-to-autodialer-definition-in-telephone-consumer-protection-act-2019-01-18/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 16:13:20+00:00

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Does a predictive dialer qualify as an “automatic telephone dialing system” (ATDS), thereby triggering the application of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA)?1 Posed more narrowly, what technologies or functions used in a telemarketing or “textmunication” dialing system qualify that system as an ATDS? This is one of the most hotly contested consumer protection issues vexing both the federal courts and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
The unresolved statutory question is whether the definition of ATDS requires the calling or texting device to “have the ability to generate random or sequential telephone numbers to be dialed, or whether it will be enough if the device can call from a database of telephone numbers generated elsewhere.”3 More precisely, does the statutory definition of ATDS also envelop predictive dialers that have only the limited functionality to dial manually stored numbers, and that do not have the functionality to dial random or sequential generated numbers?
A court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania recently issued an opinion that may provide some guidance in resolving this question, at least within the Third Circuit. In Richardson v. Verde Energy USA, Inc., No. 15-6325, 2018 BL 467912 (E.D. Pa. 2018), the district court sought to clarify what it described as the Third Circuit’s “ambiguous” opinion in Dominguez v. Yahoo, Inc., 894 F.3d 116 (3d Cir. 2018). The Third Circuit in that case ruled that it would “interpret the statutory definition of an autodialer as it had prior to the issuance of the 2015 Declaratory Ruling.” The circuit court then held that an automatic telephone dialing device “must” have the ability to generate random or sequential numbers and dial them in order to qualify as an ATDS.4 The district court found that the Third Circuit’s opinion in Dominguez provided no direct guidance about the continued validity of the FCC’s 2003 and 2008 orders.
1 See 47 U.S.C. § 227 (a)(1) (defines “automatic dialing system” as “equipment which has the capacity – (A) to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator; and (B) to dial such numbers.”) Predictive dialers may be defined generally as devices that “automatically [dial] a list of numbers that had been preprogrammed and stored in the dialer, or were downloaded from a computer database.” See Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC, 904 F.3d 1041, 1045 (9th Cir. 2018) (citing FCC 2003 Order at 14,090).
2 See ACA Int’l v. Fed. Commc’ns Comm’n, 885 F.3d 687 (D.C. Cir. 2018).
3 See Richardson v. Verde Energy USA, Inc., No. 15-6325, 2018 BL 467912 (E.D. Pa. 2018) (citing ACA Int’l, 885 F.3d at 701).
4 In Dominguez, the Third Circuit reversed the trial court’s denial of Yahoo’s motion for summary judgment, ruling instead that a disputed issue of fact existed regarding whether Yahoo’s text messaging service was presently capable of “generating random or sequential telephone numbers and dialing those numbers.” Following the Dominguez holding, the district court in Richardson granted the defendant’s motion for partial summary judgment, ruling that the “predictive dialer” system used by the defendant’s telemarketing firm was not an ATDS because of its limited functionality.
5 In light of the Marks and ACA International decisions, the FCC issued a Public Notice on October 3, 2018 reopening the comment period and seeking further comment about the definitional interpretation of an ATDS under the TCPA.
A. Michael Pratt is a member of the firm’s Trial and Dispute Resolution Practice Group, a seasoned and trial-ready team of advocates who help clients analyze and solve their most emergent and complex problems through negotiation, arbitration and litigation.

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