Hood v. Am. Auto Care, LLC

Hood v. Am. Auto Care, LLC

Opinion

 [*1219]  HARTZ, Circuit Judge.

American Auto Care (AAC), a Florida limited liability company whose sole office is in Florida, sells vehicle service contracts that provide vehicle owners with extended warranties after the manufacturer's warranty expires. Alexander Hood, a Colorado resident, appeals the dismissal for lack of personal jurisdiction of his putative class-action claim against AAC in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado.¹ We reverse, following the Supreme Court's recent decision in  [*1220]  Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court, 141 S. Ct. 1017, 209 L. Ed. 2d 225 (2021), which was handed down after the district-court judgment.

I. BACKGROUND

Mr. Hood's complaint alleges that AAC violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and invaded Mr. Hood's [**2]  and the putative class members' privacy by directing unwanted automated calls to their cell phones without consent. See 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(1)(A)(iii) ("It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States . . . to make any call . . . using any automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice . . . to any telephone number assigned to a . . . cellular telephone service . . . ."); Barr v. Am. Ass'n of Pol. Consultants, Inc., 140 S. Ct. 2335, 2344, 207 L. Ed. 2d 784 (2020) (the TCPA protects consumers from "nuisance and privacy invasion" by prohibiting "almost all robocalls to cell phones" (internal quotation marks omitted)).

Shortly after purchasing a used car, Mr. Hood began receiving prerecorded calls to his cell phone claiming that his car warranty was about to expire and offering to sell him an extended warranty. Although he was then residing in Colorado, the calls came from numbers with a Vermont area code. He had previously lived in Vermont, and his cell phone number had a Vermont area code. Mr. Hood was able to trace one such call to AAC. The complaint alleges that AAC "use[s] telemarketing to sell vehicle service contracts . . . nationwide, including in Colorado by calling Colorado phone numbers." Aplt. App. at 19.

Several defendants moved to dismiss the case for lack [**3]  of personal jurisdiction under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(2). After reviewing the complaint and the parties' arguments and affidavits, the district court granted the motions. Although it determined that Mr. Hood had alleged sufficient facts to establish that AAC purposefully directs telemarketing at Colorado, it held that the call to Mr. Hood's Vermont phone number did not arise out of, or relate to, AAC's calls to Colorado phone numbers. In light of Ford, however, the dismissal cannot stand. So long as AAC's marketing in Colorado was essentially the same as its marketing in Vermont, the telemarketing calls to Mr. Hood related to AAC's marketing in Colorado.

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