{"id":852,"date":"2021-12-22T20:57:09","date_gmt":"2021-12-23T00:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/techlaw\/?p=852"},"modified":"2021-12-22T20:57:09","modified_gmt":"2021-12-23T00:57:09","slug":"tcpa-ruling-personal-liability-of-defendants-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/techlaw\/2021\/12\/22\/tcpa-ruling-personal-liability-of-defendants-director\/","title":{"rendered":"TCPA Ruling: Personal Liability of Defendant\u2019s Director"},"content":{"rendered":"

A New Jersey federal court ruled that a class action plaintiff may assert a claim against the defendant company\u2019s Director and General Manager (\u201cManager\u201d) for personal liability under the<\/span> Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. \u00a7 227 (\u201cTCPA\u201d) .<\/p>\n

Defendant is a trading firm that provides training to consumers who want to become Forex traders.\u00a0 Plaintiff is a New Jersey resident who had a relationship with Defendant that ended four years ago.\u00a0 Plaintiff filed this class action lawsuit, asserting that Defendant used telemarketing to solicit potential consumers for its services, including through the use of pre-recorded voice messages without first obtaining the consumer\u2019s prior express consent.\u00a0 Plaintiff alleges that he received an unsolicited phone call on his cell phone that he did not answer which resulted in Defendant leaving a pre-recorded voice message, allegedly in violation of the TCPA.<\/span><\/p>\n

Plaintiff filed a motion to add Defendant\u2019s Manager and impose individual liability on him because the Manager allegedly: (1) expressly approved the transmission of the pre-recorded messages; (2) determined the content of and recording of Defendant\u2019s pre-recorded messages; (3) determined whom to make the calls using the pre-recorded messages; and (4) loaded telephone numbers into a system called Callfire, which is allegedly the call software used to make Defendant\u2019s pre-recorded message calls and also initiated the calls to telephone numbers he selected.<\/p>\n

To support his claim for individual liability under the TCPA, Plaintiff relies on: (1) FCC decision, In the Matter of the Joint Petition Filed by Dish Network, LLC, <\/i>28 FCC Rcd. 6574 (May 9, 2013) and (2) dicta in City Select Auto Sales Inc. v. David Randall Assocs.,<\/i> 885 F.3d 154 (3d Cir. 2018) (discussing that a corporation\u2019s officer may be personally liable under the TCPA if he had direct, personal participation in or personally authorized the conduct violating the TCPA).\u00a0 Defendant asserted that the FCC and the Third Circuit have not ruled that liability under the TCPA extends to individuals acting on behalf of a company.<\/p>\n

The New Jersey federal court ruled that the claim is not \u201cfutile\u201d because there has been no controlling court ruling that a claim for personal liability under the TCPA does not exist.\u00a0 Zoppi v. Proform Trading, LLC, <\/span><\/em>No. 21-2307,\u00a0<\/span><\/em>2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 236306 (D. N.J.\u00a0 Dec. 9, 2021).<\/span><\/p>\n

Lesson<\/span><\/b>:\u00a0 Until there is a controlling court ruling or other guidance, comply with the analysis in the FCC decision (above) to minimize the likelihood of an individual liability claim under the TCPA<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A New Jersey federal court ruled that a class action plaintiff may assert a claim against the defendant company\u2019s Director and General Manager (\u201cManager\u201d) for personal liability under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. \u00a7 227 (\u201cTCPA\u201d) .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[977,971,957],"ppma_author":[976],"class_list":["post-852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-infotechtelecom","tag-d-n-j","tag-sheila-raftery-wiggins","tag-tcpa"],"authors":[{"term_id":976,"user_id":265,"is_guest":0,"slug":"srwiggins","display_name":"Sheila Raftery Wiggins","avatar_url":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/techlaw\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/17\/2021\/12\/wigginssheila-100x100.jpg","author_category":"","last_name":"Wiggins","first_name":"Sheila Raftery","job_title":"","user_url":"http:\/\/www.duanemorris.com\/attorneys\/sheilarafterywiggins.html","description":"Read Sheila's bio.<\/a>"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/techlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/techlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/techlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/techlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/techlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/techlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/techlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/techlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/techlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/techlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}