So massively massively important certification ruling out. Quotewizard just got absolutely crushed in a TCPA case.

Unfortunately I am rushing to a deposition prep so I can’t spend as much time on this as warranted but everyone in the lead generation industry MUST understand this:

Mantha does not dispute that some (or, likely, virtually all) of the individuals on the proposed Class List may have signed or clicked a digital consent form or webpage as QuoteWizard asserts.19 Instead, Mantha argues that all of the consent forms proffered by QuoteWizard, including those QuoteWizard uses as examples in its Motion, see Doc. No. 348 at 35-36, suffer from the same dispositive legal defect—each fails to mention QuoteWizard by name, as Mantha alleges is required under the TCPA 

Get it?

Every single class member clicked on a form consent. But because the partner page did not include QuoteWizard the court held there is a common issue as to whether the consent is valid. (Actually the court went even further and held the form was per se invalid–which probably shouldn’t have happened due to one way intervention issues.)

The result?

Class certification of claims as to 314,828 text messages sent to 66,693 telephone numbers.

I am not going to say much about this order except to point out–as an example of the sort of reasoning it is based on–that the Court removed the word “residential” from the class definition and then still found “Were the texts sent to residential numbers?” to be a common issue, which, of course, it could not be by virtue of the definitional change.

The core predominance finding is as follows:

The Court finds that Mantha has made a sufficient showing that issues common to the Class predominate over individual issues. Mantha has shown that all major issues in this case can be answered through class-wide proof. He offers a combination of Verkhovskaya’s testimony, the NDNCR residential presumption, and QuoteWizard’s telemarketing goals and internal DNC files to demonstrate the major aspects of the Class Definition, namely: (a) that the telephone numbers on the Class List were on the NDNCR; (b) that they received two or more texts within a twelve-month period from Drips for QuoteWizard; and (c) that the texts promoted the sale of QuoteWizard’s goods or services. See Doc. No. 340 at 15-17; Doc. No. 358 at 7-16. QuoteWizard does not meaningfully contest these showings. See Doc. No. 348 at 32-39.

All bad.

$157,414,000.00 in potential damages here at $500.00 per call and over $450,000,000.00 if the damages were trebeled.

Massively important folks and a VERY clear example of what folks can expect come January if the new one-to-one rules are not followed.

Case is Mantha v. QuoteWizard, Case 1:19-cv-12235-LTS Document 368 (D. Mass 08/16/24)