Hufnus v. DoNotPay, Inc.

Background

Mathew Hufnus sued DoNotPay, Inc., under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). He alleged that DoNotPay sent text messages using an “automatic telephone dialing system,” a term defined by the TCPA.

DoNotPay moved to dismiss the claim. The opinion states that DoNotPay’s platform processed phone numbers supplied by consumers during registration for DoNotPay’s services. The complaint alleged that the platform stored those numbers randomly or sequentially, used a random or sequential generator to select numbers for targeted messages, and used such a generator to determine the order in which messages were sent.

Court’s Analysis

The court relied on the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the TCPA in Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid. Under that interpretation, an automatic telephone dialing system must have the capacity to use a random or sequential number generator to store or produce phone numbers to be called.

The court concluded that DoNotPay’s platform did not meet that definition. The platform contacted only phone numbers specifically provided by consumers during registration; it did not identify phone numbers randomly or sequentially. The fact that the platform could randomly or sequentially store, select, or order those consumer-provided numbers did not change that conclusion.

Hufnus relied on language in a footnote of the Supreme Court’s decision discussing a system that uses a random number generator to determine the order in which to select numbers from a previously created list. The court rejected that argument, explaining that the footnote concerned a list itself created through random or sequential number generation, unlike DoNotPay’s list, which consumers created by providing their own phone numbers.

The court also said that Hufnus’s interpretation conflicted with the Supreme Court’s broader explanation that the TCPA addresses systems capable of automatically dialing random or sequential blocks of telephone numbers, not systems that randomly or sequentially dial numbers from a list created in a non-random way.

Disposition

The court granted DoNotPay’s motion to dismiss. It held that DoNotPay’s platform was not an automatic telephone dialing system under the TCPA, so Hufnus’s claim failed as a matter of law. The dismissal was without leave to amend.