On March 12, 2019, the Southern District of Florida dismissed a putative Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) case for a second time because of repeated pleading defects. In Settle v. State Farm Fire and Casualty Co., Judge Ursula Ungaro granted State Farm’s dismissal request because plaintiff’s efforts to fix defects…
On January 16, 2019, the Southern District of California dismissed a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) claim against Lyft because the plaintiff failed to support the automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS) element of his claim. Like many similar TCPA plaintiffs, the plaintiff in Bodie v. Lyft, No. 3:16-cv-02558-L-NLS (S.D. Cal.) sought…
On December 13, 2018, the Northern District of California granted summary judgment to a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) defendant in a case involving confirmatory text messages. In Phan v. Agoda Company, No. 5:16-cv-07243 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 13, 2018), the plaintiff alleged that text messages he received from the defendant…
On November 13, 2018, the District of Minnesota rejected the Ninth Circuit’s expansive interpretation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act’s (TCPA’s) automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS) provision in Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC. In Roark v. Credit One Bank, N.A., No. 16-cv-00173 (D. Minn. Nov. 13, 2018), the court…
On October 18, 2018, the Northern District of Georgia declined to extend the Supreme Court’s holding in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of Cal., S.F. Cty., 137 U.S. 1773 (2017) to dismiss or to strike the class allegations in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) case. In Dennis v….
On August 10, 2018 the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a final rule adopting changes to Regulation P to bring the regulation into conformity with its authorizing statute, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, 15 U.S.C. § 6801 et seq. (GLBA). The rule, which was enacted to reduce regulatory burden on financial…
At the end of May 2018, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released an analysis of consumer debt collection complaints highlighting several issues that often arise in those complaints. In light of Acting Director Mulvaney’s comment in his January 2018 staff memo that debt collection complaints made up the majority…
On May 8, 2018, the Sixth Circuit affirmed dismissal of a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) claim against Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer. As the Sixth Circuit noted at the start of its opinion in Health One Medical Center, Eastpointe P.L.L.C. v. Mohawk, Inc. et al., “[s]ome questions seem to arise…
On February 13, 2018, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois decertified a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) text-message class in light of new evidence of consent obtained during the class-member identification process. Johnson v. Yahoo! Inc., No. 1:14-cv-02028 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 13, 2018), is instructive for TCPA defendants…
Goodwin announced today that Anthony Alexis, the former Head of the Office of Enforcement at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has joined the firm in the Washington, D.C. office as a partner in the Financial Industry Practice and as the head of the firm’s Consumer Financial Services Enforcement Practice. “Tony’s extensive enforcement and compliance…
On November 16, 2017, the Southern District of California dismissed TCPA claims on standing grounds, finding that the plaintiff had not alleged a concrete injury. In Selby v. Ocwen Loan Servicing, no. 3:17-cv-00973 (S.D. Cal), Judge Bencivengo concluded that the telephone calls the plaintiff allegedly received were not “telemarketing” calls…
On September 29, 2017, the United States Chamber of Commerce and various business and financial services groups (collectively, Plaintiffs) filed a complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, alleging that—for four independent reasons—the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) recently-issued…
On August 23, 2017, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) published guidance on filings required by national banks and federal savings associations (collectively referred to here as “banks”) pertaining to “substantial asset changes.” The guidance lists various events that are considered substantial asset changes for which banks must…
Last week, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the Northern District of Georgia’s dismissal of a putative Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) case against Equifax and Transunion. In Pedro v. Equifax, Inc., plaintiff sought to represent a putative class of authorized users of delinquent credit cards who did not have payment obligations…
On August 4, 2017, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) published four prototypes of model overdraft disclosure forms the Bureau is testing as part of its broader “Know Before You Owe” efforts. The prototypes are an important indicator that the CFPB is still actively paying attention to issues concerning overdraft…
Last week, the Seventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of two Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) class actions on Spokeo grounds. The cases, which were consolidated for appeal, were filed by the same plaintiff against two corporate defendants alleged to have provided credit-report disclosures that did not comply with the FCRA. …
On June 7, 2017, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a Consent Order against mortgage servicer Fay Servicing, LLC (Fay), requiring Fay Servicing to pay $1.15 million to borrowers and to cease activities that the CFPB contended violated the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), its implementing regulation, Regulation X,…
On May 15, 2017, petitioners in E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. v. Bobbi-Jo Smiley filed a reply brief with the U.S. Supreme Court defending their petition for certiorari and arguing that the Court should take up review of the Third Circuit’s revival of their employees’ claims for overtime…
On April 12, 2017, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it had secured a $2 million civil penalty against the president of a debt collection company for violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) in United States v. Commercial Recovery Systems, Inc.—one of over a hundred cases brought…
On March 30, 2017, Judge Karas of the Southern District of New York dismissed multiple claims in a putative nationwide class action challenging default servicing activities. In the case, Tardibuono-Quigley v. HSBC Mortgage Corp., the plaintiff sued her lender (HSBC) and mortgage servicer (PHH) to contest charges she claimed were wrongly…