If TCPAWorld has taught us anything it's that a plaintiff without a lawyer can create damaging case law when not taken seriously.

Here is another example.

In Ioszpe v. Unifin, 2025 WL 2487349 (W.D. Ok. Aug. 28, 2025) a Plaintiff without a lawyer– i.e. a guy bringing his own lawsuit– just survived the pleadings stage in a TCPA suit alleging ATDS usage.

The complaint alleged the defendant–apparently a debt collector–called him from four different numbers in his area code. He also alleged the collector failed to display its name on the caller ID and that he had to wait on the line when he answered the call to determine who had called him.

On these allegations the plaintiff alleged the defendant called using an ATDS and sued under the TCPA.

After Facebook many courts have thrown out similar allegations because the calls were not generated randomly. While the Supreme Court’s ruling does not actually say that–quite the opposite actually– the majority position nationwide is now that debt collectors simply do not use ATDS because randomly calling people to collect a debt makes no sense.

But the Ioszpe court saw it differently:

Plaintiff, however, did plead “more” than a bare recitation of an auto-dialer. The Petition alleges Unifin used “an auto-dialer” to place four calls to Plaintiff’s number without consent. Id. ¶¶ 8–10. It further alleges that the calls “lacked Caller ID identification information and/or ability to opt out while waiting for the next available agent.” Id. ¶ 11. As alleged, the Court can infer that Plaintiff received a call, answered, had to “wait for an agent” to join the line, then had to “interact” with the agent to “probe for” Unifin’s name and the purpose of the call. Id. As bare-bones as it may be, the Court finds that the Petition supports an inference that an auto-dialer was used. 

Hmmmm.

Notably there is no discussion of how the system operated or the presence (or absence) of an ROSNG. Instead the court was simply focused on the plaintiff’s inability to have additional facts without the aide of discovery.

While this case still seems unlikely to advance past the MSJ stage, the fact a court just allowed a guy without a lawyer to conduct discovery on the defendant’s dialing system is a bit worrisome. If he can do it- presumably others can as well.

Will keep an eye on it.