As I have repeated said, the rule that TCPA liability automatically extends–without any piercing of the corporate veil–to individuals who personally participated in a TCPA violation is one of the most unfair rules in the law.

Usually if a corporation does something illegal the people who run the corporation–or who engaged in the acts–are not in trouble individually for it. That’s sort of why corporations exist.

But in TCPAWorld for some reason those rules do not apply. An employee–even a corporate officer, even a CEO!–can be held personally and individually liable for acts of the company that violate the TCPA.

In a new case, however, a CEO was let free from a case on jurisdictional grounds and there’s an important lesson here.

In Braver v. Clear Sky Financial, 2023 WL 5439224 (W.D. Ok. Aug. 23, 2023) Defendant Anthony Francisco, the sole managing member of Clear Sky, asked to be let out of the case since he did not live in Oklahoma and the Court agreed!

In essence the calls at issue were not placed by Clear Sky or Mr. Francisco directly. They were made by a third-party CM Solutions. And while Clear Sky might be stuck in the case on an agency basis, Mr. Francisco did not have an agency relationship with the caller:

Mr. Francisco is the sole managing member of Clear Sky, he oversees Clear Sky’s business, and he personally made the decision for Clear Sky to hire a third-party vendor to provide TCPA compliant leads. Mr. Francisco’s verified discovery responses also indicate that Clear Sky does not initiate outbound telemarketing calls, Mr. Francisco did not direct the vendor to make calls into Oklahoma and was not aware they were doing so, and Mr. Francisco did not make the decision to contact Plaintiff…

Although Mr. Francisco oversees Clear Sky’s business and he personally hired the vendor that made the calls, there are no facts showing that Mr. Francisco was personally involved in placing the calls, authorizing the calls, supervising the vendor’s activities, crafting scripts for the calls, or ratifying the vendor’s conduct. Further, like in Visser and Cunningham, Mr. Francisco has provided verified (and uncontroverted) discovery responses stating that he did not direct the vendor to make any calls to Oklahoma and was not aware they were doing so. Plaintiff has not shown that Mr. Francisco purposefully directed any activities at Oklahoma and Mr. Francisco therefore lacks the minimum contacts with Oklahoma necessary for a finding of personal jurisdiction.

Get it?

Although Clear Sky might be stuck in the case, Francisco’s lack of connection to the injury causing conduct deprives the court of specific jurisdiction over him.

Note, the ruling may have been different if Francisco lived in OK or if Clear Sky had made the calls directly. But because there was a different party involved, Francisco is safe-for now.

It should be noted that the Plaintiff could elect to sue Francisco is his own home state. So he may not be totally out of trouble. But this is still a great ruling.

Hope you enjoyed.