Hi TCPAWorld! The Dame here with another one for you.

In Advantage Medical Associates, P.A. v. Electrostim Medical Services, Inc., No. CV 24-2992-GC-JBD, 2025 WL 2783753 (D.N.J. Sept. 30, 2025), the defendant’s attempt to end a TCPA class action on a consent defense was denied at summary judgment. The facts were straightforward: a doctor provided a fax number on a patient-specific prescription form in 2017. Nearly three years later, with no contact in between, the company sent a mass-marketing fax to that number advertising its full product line.

The court applied the Third Circuit’s two-part Cephalon test for solicited faxes. While the first prong—that the doctor voluntarily provided the number—was met, the case fell apart on the second. The fax must “relate to the reason” the number was provided in the first place. Here, the reason was narrow and transactional: to allow for questions about a specific patient’s 2017 prescription. A broad marketing fax sent in 2020 had nothing to do with that.

The defendant tried to argue for a broader scope of consent by relying on a deposition quote from the doctor about providing his number to “facilitate it, the services.” The court found this phrase was ambiguous and could easily be interpreted narrowly to mean facilitating services for the original patient only. The court found that this created a genuine dispute of material fact—which is all a plaintiff needs to defeat a summary judgment motion.

The defendant’s final argument, that consent should be inferred because an “established business relationship” existed, also was rejected by the court. The court reasoned that the record didn’t support any business relationship as there was only evidence of a single point of contact three years prior.

So if the defendant wants to use the consent defense to win this one, they’ll have to do it at trial!