In what is becoming something of a December tradition, a court played the role of Bad Santa by allowing a plaintiff to name a corporate officer as personally liable in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) case.
The case—Zoppi v. Proform Trading, LLC, Civ. Action No. 21-2307 (CCC) (JSA), 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 236306 (D. N.J. December 9, 2021)—is a TCPA class action that began with a single prerecorded call received by the plaintiff way back at the beginning of this year. Months later, during the course of litigation, the plaintiff also named the defendant’s Director and General Manager as “as an individual defendant and impose individual liability on him pursuant to the TCPA.” The court decided last week to allow this motion to proceed sue to the fact that the plaintiff has alleged the corporate officer “personally recorded and made the TCPA violative pre-recorded voice call to Plaintiff’s cell phone in violation of the TCPA.”
As with every TCPA class action, it remains to be seen how the case will proceed. But it is yet another demonstration of how the TCPA allows plaintiffs to target corporate officers for personal liability under a wide variety of pretexts.