Manually Dialed Telephone Calls May Violate TCPA

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act regulates the use of auto/predictive dialers, which are used to initiate faxes, prerecorded voice messages, and SMS text messages.  But a federal court in the Western District of Wisconsin has now expanded the reach of the TCPA beyond auto/predictive dialers, holding in Nelson v. Santander Consumer USA that the federal statute may apply to calls even if an auto/predictive dialer is not used to initiate them.

In Nelson v. Santander, plaintiff Heather Nelson alleged that the defendant, an automobile finance company, called her cellular telephone number (phone service was subscribed to in her husband's name) more than 1,026 times and left 116 prerecorded messages over the course of a year in an attempt to collect a debt on two vehicles the plaintiff had financed.  Among other claims, the plaintiff alleged violations of the TCPA.  The district court granted the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment on the TCPA claim and awarded