Its not every day you see a party fail twice to win a case where the other side hasn’t even shown up.

Well, today is just such a day.

Everyone in the industry knows about the massive Mantha litigation against Quote Wizard. The Wolf has Quote Wizard on the ropes with rulings suggesting consents obtained for class members were not valid–and that’s a really bad thing.

Well Quote Wizard went after RevPoint–who allegedly sold the lead that brought the Wolf to everyone’s doorstep–and RevPoint turned around and sued something called Plural Marketing on the same theory.

Well Plural didn’t show up in court but RevPoint still could not get a win in its effort to hold Plural responsible, and that’s just absurd.

In RevPoint v. Plural, 2023 WL 6818613 (N.Y. Oct. 16, 2023) the Court denied RevPoint judgment a SECOND TIME concluding it could not just rely on the findings made in the Mantha summary judgment ruling:

The district court’s summary-judgment ruling (and supporting findings) in the Mantha Action cannot be afforded issue-preclusive effect against Plural for the simple reason that—as in Sleasman—Plural is not a party to the Mantha Action…

The current action does not involve a representational relationship of this kind. The only connection between Plural and the defendant in the Mantha Action, QuoteWizard, is that QuoteWizard bought the Mantha telemarketing lead from RevPoint, which bought it from Plural. That Plural and QuoteWizard are two links apart in a chain of sale, and have the same interest in the legal validity of the item being sold, does not place them in privity for preclusion purposes.

Plural is not a party to the Mantha Action and, on this record, has no connections to the parties to that action. RevPoint cannot rely on rulings rendered in the Mantha Action to establish the facts constituting RevPoint’s claims against Plural. It must do so instead through other means. RevPoint could, for example, obtain and provide the documentary and testimonial evidence that persuaded the district court in the Mantha Action that Mantha had not consented to receiving the telemarketing texts at issue; or other evidence of similar import. But RevPoint may not merely point to the rulings in the Mantha Action, standing alone.

Eesh.

So the Court had to give RevPoint a roadmap of how to properly seek default judgment. You don’t see that everyday.