King v. Time Warner Cable Inc.

The Second Circuit reversed the district court's grant of partial summary judgment for plaintiff on her claim that Time Warner knowingly or willfully violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, 47 U.S.C. 227, by using an "automatic telephone dialing system" to call her cell phone 153 times without her consent. The court held that the district court's analysis was based on an incorrect interpretation of the statutory text where the district court relied primarily on a Declaratory Ruling and Order issued by the FCC in 2015 that has since been invalidated by the D.C. Circuit. When the court considered the statute independently, without an administrative interpretation to defer to, the best interpretation of the statutory language was the one suggested by the D.C. Circuit's discussion in ACA Int'l v. FCC, 885 F.3d 687, 699 (D.C. Cir. 2018): in the TCPA's definition of an autodialer, a device's "capacity" referred to its current functions absent additional modifications, regardless of whether those functions were in use during the offending call. Accordingly, the court remanded for the district court to develop the factual record and to apply the appropriate standard. View "King v. Time Warner Cable Inc." on Justia Law