Student Loan Company’s Predictive Dialer Broke Robocall Law (1)

A student loan company violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by making more than 350 calls to two customers’ cell phones, a federal court ruled.

The Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency used an autodialer to make the calls because its system automatically dialed stored numbers, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan said Aug. 19. The court granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs’ claims under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

The decision highlights how courts have struggled to define “autodialer” under the TCPA after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit scrapped the ...