The United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania recently held that a pro se plaintiff failed to plead facts sufficient to demonstrate that an agency relationship existed. This holding reinforced the need for specificity in Telephone Consumer Protection Act claims that allege vicarious liability. In Robert D. Kline v. Elite Medical Laboratories, Inc., plaintiff Robert Kline claimed he received numerous unconsented calls to his personal cell phone that were placed by either…

Furthering his state’s historic consumer protections against surprise medical bills, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law this past October the Patient Protection Act, adding additional protections for emergency room visits. New York was already a bellwether in the field, passing the historic Surprise Medical Bill Act in 2014 to prevent unexpected medical bills from emergency room visits. Under this year’s Patient Protection Act, health insurance companies are now prohibited from charging members who were…

Here’s the problem: In the managed care litigation space, noncontracted medical providers are suing payors as part of their business-collections strategy, utilizing quasi-contract theories of recovery in their attempt to justify ever growing bills. In the traditional contracted-provider/ payor relationship, the network agreement, of course, governs rates of reimbursement. Medical providers are turning to quasi-contract claims with frequency, however, when there is no contract between the payor (or managed care provider or defendant) and provider,…

Troutman Sanders attorneys David Anthony, Virginia Flynn, Alan Wingfield, and Chad Fuller will be hosting a Webinar titled, “A Glimmer of Light: An Update on Key TCPA Developments” on November 19th, 2019 from 3:00pm – 4:00pm EST. The webinar will be discussing recent opinions from various courts around the country on key TCPA issues, such as revocation, health care exception, and the impending FCC ruling. Post-ACA, courts are making some business-friendly decisions.…

A California district court issued a ruling in a debt collection-related Telephone Consumer Protection Act case that clarifies whether a debtor with multiple accounts revokes consent for all of those accounts when speaking to a creditor or collector about just one of the accounts. The case, Henry Mendoza v. Allied Interstate LLC, et al., No. SACV 17-885 JVS, (C.D. Cal. Oct. 22, 2019), involves a plaintiff who racked up debt on multiple accounts with one…

In a non-precedential ruling, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld a district court decision to grant summary judgment in favor of a defendant that was sued for violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. The plaintiffs – a condominium owner and his children – lapsed on payments owed to a condominium agency, established a monthly payment plan, and ultimately filed for bankruptcy. The bankruptcy discharged some of the fees, but the balance…

It is common knowledge that class action lawsuits are expensive. And we know that many consumer class action lawsuits are filed without a proper class representative or with a class that is otherwise ill-defined, legally deficient, or unascertainable. Other purported Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action lawsuits present potentially dispositive issues from the outset, such as whether the calls the named plaintiff received were subject to the TCPA in the first place. Defendants hit with…