TCPA Footnote 7 Cannot Save Autodialer Claims

In the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Facebook v. Duguid, the Court clarified the definition of the term "autodialer" as used in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA"). In that decision, largely a win for the telemarketing industry, the Supreme Court included a TCPA footnote (also referred to as Footnote 7) that addressed a linguistic point which illustrates how parts of the TCPA's definition of autodialer work together. Some plaintiff's attorneys have taken Footnote 7 to mean that any pre-produced contact list that dialing equipment calls from is, by definition, an autodialer. A South Carolina federal court recently became among the first to directly address the TCPA footnote issue in a case captioned Timms v. USAA Federal Sav. Bank.