State Farm Didn’t Make TCPA-Violative Call to Plaintiff, Says Its Motion to Dismiss
The “fundamental flaw” in plaintiff Gabriel Nater’s Oct. 27 class action alleging that he received a prerecorded call from State Farm without his prior express consent, in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, is that the insurance company didn’t…
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place that call (see 2310300003), said State Farm’s memorandum of law Tuesday (docket 1:23-cv-01408) in U.S. District Court for Central Illinois in Peoria in support of its motion to dismiss Nater’s complaint. Nater’s allegations that State Farm made the call are “entirely conclusory,” said the memorandum. “No facts are alleged to support that assertion,” it added. To the contrary, the alleged facts suggest that the entity making the call was an "unnamed third-party lead generator,” it said. As such, Nater’s attempt to hold State Farm “directly liable” for the call fails, it said. Though a defendant, in some circumstances, “may be held vicariously liable under the TCPA for calls made by some third party on their behalf,” Nater’s complaint “makes no attempt to plead any such vicarious liability claim,” it said. The TCPA prohibition at issue here also applies “only to residential telephone lines, rather than business lines,” it said. Nater’s failure to allege that the called number is on a residential line “provides additional grounds for dismissal,” it said.