The Background: The plaintiff put his name on the defendant’s Do Not Call list before July 2020. The owners of two agencies hired a company that subcontracted with another company that placed the calls at issue — five in total.

• The two agencies were allowed to initiate their own marketing campaigns and were allowed to use non-contracted telemarketers as long as those telemarketers followed the defendant’s Do Not Call policy.
• The owner of Transfer Kings, the company hired by the two agencies, did not tell either that he had subcontracted the work out to another company, a lead generator called Atlantic Telemarketing.
• The defendant “strongly suggests” that the plaintiff entered his phone number and a pseudonym on a website that ended up being included in a list that was purchased by Transfer Kings or Atlantic Telemarketing. Whomever entered the name and phone number on the website had to consent to being contacted.
• Of the five calls, the plaintiff answered none of them, but on two occasions called the number back. The plaintiff said his name was Michael Johnson.
• The plaintiff admitted to using pseudonyms as a means of getting information about who was calling to get the calls to stop.

The Ruling: The defendant was unable to submit evidence to prove how it came to possess the plaintiff’s phone number, which means it could not disprove the plaintiff’s argument that he never gave written consent to be contacted, ruled Judge Joan B. Gottschall of the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

• Judge Gottschall then went into detail explaining why the defendant should be held vicariously liable for the calls in question.
• “Accordingly, the undisputed material summary judgment evidence establishes that: (1) Gilmond and Fleming were Allstate’s agents with actual authority to hire telemarketing vendors and appoint them as subagents; (2) they appointed Transfer Kings as a subagent; and (3) Transfer Kings appointed Atlantic as its subagent,” she wrote.

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The Background: The plaintiff applied for a loan via the defendant’s website in 2017. As part of the application process, the plaintiff was presented with a screen that indicated he had read, understood, and consented to the language outlines in a number of policies and agreements, including the defendant’s Electronic Communications Policy and the Arbitration Agreement. All of the agreements were hyperlinked in blue font to the full text. The plaintiff checked a box that was labeled, “I Agree” and subsequently applied for the loan.

• The defendant sent the plaintiff two text messages — one in 2022 and one in 2023 — each attempting to sell financial services. The plaintiff had registered his phone number with the national Do Not Call registry and claims he did not provide consent or invite the text messages from the defendant and did not engage in any transactions with the defendant in the previous 18 months.

The Ruling: The plaintiff’s main argument is that he did not consent to receiving the text messages in question, but to Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman of the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, that was not the issue. The issue is whether the plaintiff’s claims fall within the scope of the arbitration agreement he consented to when he applied for the loan.

• The arbitration agreement indicated the plaintiff would arbitrate “any claim, dispute or controversy arising out of or related to .. (ii) [his] submission of information to SoFi in connection with any non-mortgage loan offered by SoFi [or] . (v) the disclosures provided to [him] by SoFi in connection with any non-mortgage loan offered by SoFi?”
• Had the plaintiff read the agreements, he would have noticed there was a provision that indicated individuals could change their TCPA preferences and could revoke consent by doing so on the defendant’s website. “Strong or weak, [the plaintiff’s] claims fall within the scope of the Agreement,” Judge Coleman wrote.
• The plaintiff has filed a notice of appeal in the case.

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