District Court holds TCPA covers direct-drop voicemails

Courts TCPA FCC Debt Collection

On July 16, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan held in a matter of first impression that direct-to-voicemail or direct-drop voicemails are covered by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). In so holding, the court denied a debt collection agency’s (defendant) motion for summary judgment. According to the opinion, the defendant asserted that the prerecorded voicemails left on the plaintiff’s cell phone in an effort to collect a mortgage did not violate the TCPA because calls were not dialed to the cell phone but rather deposited directly on a voicemail service—an action the defendant claimed was not within the scope of the TCPA and unregulated. However, the court found that the defendant’s use of the voicemail product constituted as a “call” within TCPA’s broadly constructed purview. In addition, the court specifically stated that the direct drop voicemails left by the defendant were “arguably more of a nuisance” to the plaintiff than receiving text messages since she would have to take steps each time to review or delete the message. In denying the defendant’s motion, the court held that “[b]oth the FCC and the courts have recognized that the scope of the TCPA naturally evolves in parallel with telecommunications technology as it evolves, e.g., with the advent of text messages and email-to-text messages or, as we have here, new technology to get into a consumer’s voicemail box directly.”