By: Lina R. Powell

Courts have seen a flurry of activity in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) realm this year—and August was no exception. In April 2021, the Supreme Court’s Facebook v. Duguid, 141 S. Ct. 1163 (2021), settled the long-debated question of what constitutes an automatic telephone dialing system under the TCPA, 47 U.S.C. § 227. Many anticipated the Court’s willingness to narrow the scope of claims brought under the statute would narrow the number of lawsuits brought under the TCPA. But TCPA cases continue to proliferate, and two appellate courts recently revived claims based on the TCPA.

On August 10, 2021, the Ninth Circuit revived a lawsuit against Fraser Financial and Insurance Services, holding that job recruitment robocalls received by cell phones fall within the TCPA’s scope if the call “did not involve an emergency and was not made with [the consumer’s] prior express consent.” Loyhayem v. Fraser Fin. & Ins. Servs., Inc., ---F. 4th---, 2021 WL 3504057, *2 (9th Cir. Aug. 10, 2021). The TCPA generally makes it illegal to place robocalls to someone’s home phone or cell phone. The Ninth Circuit held that the district court misread the governing robocall consent standards in dismissing the action. While the plaintiff admitted that the robocalls did not involve “advertising or telemarketing”—which are prohibited under the TCPA—the Ninth Circuit rejected the argument that only robocalls involving “advertising or telemarketing” are subject to the TCPA. Id. Rather, the Ninth Circuit noted that the TCPA applies to “any call” that is “made to a cell phone using an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or pre-recorded voice, unless the call is made either for emergency purposes or with the prior express consent of the person being called,” and that such consent be given either orally or in writing. Id. The Ninth Circuit found that the plaintiff’s allegations that he had not consented orally or in writing to receiving Fraser Financial’s call were sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss. Id. at *3.

By: Alexander M. Smith

In 2017, the Supreme Court held in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court, 137 S. Ct. 1773 (2017), that a defendant in a mass tort action is not subject to specific personal jurisdiction as to the claims of non-resident plaintiffs whose injuries lack a sufficient connection to the forum state. The Court did not decide, however, whether its holding applied to nationwide class actions. And in the four years following Bristol-Myers, district courts in the Ninth Circuit have reached highly divergent results:

• Some district courts have “agree[d] . . . that Bristol-Myers Squibb applies in the nationwide class action context” and have dismissed claims brought on behalf of putative nationwide classes, reasoning that “a state cannot assert specific personal jurisdiction for the claims of unnamed class members that would not be subject to specific personal jurisdiction if asserted as individual claims.” Carpenter v. PetSmart, Inc., 441 F. Supp. 3d 1028, 1035 (S.D. Cal. 2020); see also, e.g., Wenokur v. AXA Equitable Life Ins. Co., No. 17-165, 2017 WL 4357916, at *4 (D. Ariz. Oct. 2, 2017) (“The Court notes that it lacks personal jurisdiction over the claims of putative class members with no connection to Arizona and therefore would not be able to certify a nationwide class.”).