Arbitration provisions can by a TCPA defendant’s best friend, but usually that’s to avoid class litigation.

While a TCPA suit can–and very often is–be filed as a class action in court such cases are not permitted under most arbitration provisions. That means if a defendant can successfully compel arbitration it may take a billion dollar exposure case and take it down to $500.00. Not a bad day in court.

But there are other reasons to seek arbitration where available, even in an individual suit as AmEx just demonstrated.

In Adler v. American Express Co., 2025 WL 904462 (N.D. Oh. March 25, 2025) AmEx compelled an individual TCPA claim to arbitration.

The background facts here are interesting. Plaintiff claims AmEx was mistakenly calling him repeatedly–say, 15 times a month– for years with prerecorded calls related to a debt he didn’t owe.

If these allegations are true Plaintiff seemingly has a six figure case against AmEx ($500.00 is the MINIMUM liability for such errant robocalls to a cellular phone) but the good news for AmEx is that the suit was brought on an individual basis.

Despite the individual nature of the suit AmEx asked the court to compel arbitration. Plaintiff opposed arguing the calls at issue were not related to HIS account but the Court determined that did not matter– any dispute between the parties had to go to arbitration. And since Plaintiff was a cardholder who had accepted the arbitration provision by using the card he was a party stuck bringing suit in arbitration only.

So this was a fine win by AmEx but only because it will make it harder for everyone to find out what happened in the lawsuit. Everything that happens in federal court is public, but arbitrations are private proceedings. So we may never know what happened with Mr. Adler.

Folks facing TCPA trouble should ALWAYS think about compelling arbitration– and anyone in the lead gen space should be leveraging these provisions as part of every form.