Capital One To Pay Largest TCPA Settlement On Record

Capital One Financial Corp. ("Capital One") and three collection agencies have agreed to pay one of the largest settlement amounts in history — $75.5 million — to end a consolidated class action lawsuit alleging that the companies used an automated dialer to call customers' cellphones without consent in violation of the twenty-two-year-old Telephone Consumer Protection Act ("TCPA"). Judge Holderman of the Northern District of Illinois preliminarily approved the settlement in late July.

TCPA Allegations and the Proposed Settlement

In 2012, separate cases against each defendant were consolidated by the U.S. Panel on Multidistrict Litigation because the collection firms were collecting debts on behalf of Capital One. The allegations were largely the same: that the companies used autodialers and/or pre-recorded messages in calls to cell phones without the consumers' express consent.