Meier v. Allied Interstate LLC

Meier v. Allied Interstate LLC

Opinion

MEMORANDUM³

Richard Meier appeals from the district court's order granting summary judgment to Allied Interstate LLC (Allied) on his claims under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). We affirm.

1. Meier contends that the LiveVox Platform is an Automatic Telephone Dialing System (ATDS) under the TCPA. 47 U.S.C. § 227(a)(1). While this appeal was pending, the Supreme Court held that an ATDS "must have the capacity either to store a telephone number using a random or sequential generator or to produce a telephone number using a random or sequential number generator." Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, 141 S. Ct. 1163, 1167, 209 L. Ed. 2d 272 (2021). The LiveVox platform requires customers such as Allied to upload lists of telephone numbers. It does not produce the numbers it dials using a random [*2]  or sequential number generator.

Meier therefore must show that the platform stores telephone numbers using a random or sequential number generator. He does not contend that the LiveVox system stores numbers using a random number generator. Instead, he argues that the system stores telephone numbers using a sequential number generator because it uploads a customer's list of numbers and produces them to be dialed in the same order they were provided, i.e., sequentially.

Under Meier's interpretation, virtually any system that stores a pre-produced list of telephone numbers would qualify as an ATDS (if it could also autodial the stored numbers, see 47 U.S.C. § 227(a)(1)(B)). But this is precisely the outcome the Supreme Court rejected in Duguid when it overturned a decision by this court holding that an ATDS "need only have the capacity to store numbers to be called and to dial such numbers automatically." 141 S. Ct. at 1168 (internal quotation marks omitted).

Meier relies on a footnote in the Court's opinion that endeavored to explain why Congress might have used both "produce" and "store" in the ATDS definition even though the phrase "produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator" seemingly captures [*3]  all of the autodialers Congress sought to regulate. See id. at 1172 n.7. Ultimately, the Court suggested that Congress may simply have taken a "belt and suspenders approach" to regulating autodialers. Id. This discussion was not central to the Court's analysis of the equipment at issue in Duguid, and it does not require us to adopt Meier's expansive interpretation. The LiveVox system does not qualify as an ATDS merely because it stores pre-produced lists of telephone numbers in the order in which they are uploaded. Meier's TCPA claims therefore fail.

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