The federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA; 47 U.S.C. § 227) and its implementing regulations (47 C.F.R. § 64.1200) regulate the use of automatic telephone dialing systems (“ATDS”) and artificial or prerecorded voices (“prerecorded messages”) in telephone communications. Generally speaking, the TCPA prohibits using an ATDS or prerecorded message to contact cell phones, and prerecorded [...]
Florida recently passed two bills, Senate Bills 740 and 568 respectively, which amend Florida’s telemarketing law as follows: The definition of telephonic sales call expressly covers voicemail messages, including ringless voicemail, thereby bringing such messages within the scope of the state’s telemarketing rules; Telemarketers must honor company-specific Do Not Call requests from businesses; Telemarketers must [...]
Now that the D.C. Circuit, in ACA Int’l v. FCC, set aside the portion of the FCC’s 2015 TCPA Order pertaining to the definition of an automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS), callers want an answer to a seemingly simple question: Is a predictive dialer an ATDS? The issue is more complex than it seems but [...]
Sound TCPA compliance policies, vigilant complaint investigations, and prompt enforcement were key to rebutting class action claims that sellers ratified telemarketers’ TCPA violations according to a recent opinion from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. UTC Fire & Security Americas Corporation and Honeywell International manufacture home security systems and sell them to distributors and/or retailers. [...]
It’s been one week since the D.C. Circuit Court issued its landmark decision on the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), and many contact centers are still unclear about what this means for their customer engagement initiatives. Join M&S partners Michele Shuster and Nick Whisler as they join Noble Systems for an informative webinar, “Understand the [...]
M&S Partner Michele Shuster will join a panel of regulatory and industry speakers on Friday, March 23, 2018 during a joint policy forum offered by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to discuss the challenges posed by illegal robocalls and caller ID spoofing at the FCC’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Michele [...]
On Friday, the D.C. Circuit Court issued its long-awaited Opinion on the Professional Association for Customer Engagement’s (PACE) FCC TCPA Appeal. What does this landmark ruling mean for the customer engagement industry and your business’s marketing efforts? Join M&S Partner and PACE General Counsel Michele Shuster, along with PACE, on Monday, March 19th for an informative [...]
The long anticipated DC Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion regarding the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) July 15, 2015 Omnibus Declaratory Ruling has been released. The court specifically held that the FCC exceeded the scope of its authority in broadly defining what constitutes an Automatic Telephone Dialing System. The court also concluded that the FCC’s one [...]
As currently interpreted, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) imposes strict liability — subject to an illusory one call “safe harbor” — for autodialed calls and texts sent to reassigned phone numbers. This interpretation, coupled with the lack of an authoritative reassigned number database, makes it impossible for businesses to send autodialed communications without opening [...]
As we have previously reported, individualized questions of consent in TCPA litigation regularly prevent class certification. One recent decision went a step further and found that substantial questions of consent can constitute grounds to decertify a class. In Johnson v. Yahoo! Inc., the plaintiff claimed that Yahoo! violated the TCPA when its instant message platform [...]
