A federal court in Florida granted an order for partial summary judgment in favor of a plaintiff in a TCPA case against Navient Solutions, Inc. (NSI), and its affiliate, Student Assistance Corporation (SAC) which amounts to an award of over $360,000 with the potential for treble damages if the plaintiff can prove that the two defendants “willfully or knowingly” violated the TCPA.
Plaintiff Willie McCaskill alleged that Defendant NSI placed 249 calls to a cell phone number ending in -6140 and that Defendant SAC placed 478 calls to the same number. Plaintiff claims that the calls violated the TCPA, the Florida Consumer Collection Practices Act, and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
The parties agreed that the calls were made using an ATDS and that the calls were not made for emergency purposes. However, what was in dispute was whether Plaintiff provided “prior express consent.” The calls were made in regards to a student loan that Plaintiff’s daughter was issued. Defendants claim that the daughter confirmed the -6140 number as her own when she requested a voluntary forbearance on her student loan from Sallie Mae, NSI’s predecessor. The daughter testified that she did not enter in the -6140 number into Sallie Mae’s website but rather entered in her own number.
The court found that there was no evidence that Plaintiff, herself, provided prior express consent, and determined that only remaining question was whether somehow the daughter could and had consented on Plaintiff’s behalf. To prove that “consent” the court held that Defendants needed to establish that the daughter 1) had authority to consent on Plaintiff’s behalf, and 2) that the daughter did, in fact, consent. The court found no evidence of such consent.