LYNN ADELMAN, District Judge.
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act ("TCPA") provides that it is unlawful for
The basic facts that give rise to this suit are these: Plaintiff's son, Troy Mudgett, is a customer of Navy Federal and has some accounts that are past due. Navy Federal referred Troy's accounts to its collections department, which began making calls to Troy. Navy Federal had difficulties reaching Troy at the contact numbers that he had provided, and so it began a process known as "skiptracing," in which a collections agent attempts to find the debtor's current contact information by conducting internet searches and calling the debtor's friends and family. On April 28, 2010, a Navy Federal agent engaged in skiptracing found Ms. Mudgett's cell phone number through an internet search. This agent, Carol Martin, then made the call that generated the present lawsuit. A different collections agent, Amanda Owens, made two additional calls to Mudgett's cell phone in July 2010.
Navy Federal contends that its agents made all three of these calls the old-fashioned way — by manually dialing the number on an ordinary telephone — and that therefore it cannot be liable under the TCPA for making a call to a cell phone with an autodialer. As evidence, Navy Federal submits the declarations of the agents who made the calls to Mudgett — Martin and Owens. Both agents state that they manually dialed the numbers. Moreover, Martin states that she never handles calls placed by Navy Federal's autodialers in the course of her job. Navy Federal also submits a declaration from the manager of its collections department, Holly Sweeney, in which Sweeney explains Navy Federal's general policies and procedures regarding collections calls. Sweeney states that although Navy Federal does use autodialers for some purposes, she reviewed the records generated by the autodialers and determined that they were not used to make the calls to Mudgett's cell phone.
Mudgett makes two arguments in response. First, she contends that her own declaration states facts from which a reasonable fact-finder could infer that the calls to her cell phone were made by an autodialer — namely, that she told the agent who made the April 28th call to stop calling her cell phone and that the agent said that her cell number "could not be taken off the computer until midnight." (Mudgett Decl. ¶ 12, ECF No. 37.) Mudgett contends that a reasonable fact-finder could infer that the "computer" being referred to was an autodialer and that Martin and Owens are lying about having dialed the phone themselves. Second, Mudgett contends that Navy Federal's phone and computer systems are interconnected, and that this interconnected system qualifies as an automatic telephone dialing system within the meaning of the TCPA. Therefore, argues Mudgett, Navy Federal is liable for making calls to her cell phone with an autodialer even if it is true that Martin and Owens manually dialed their phones.
Mudgett's second argument is based on language of the TCPA that defines "automatic telephone dialing system" as equipment that has the capacity to autodial. See 47 U.S.C. § 227(a)(1). She argues that Navy Federal's autodialers are connected to the phones that were used to call her cell phone, and that even if the calls to her cell phone were placed manually, those calls were made using equipment having the capacity to autodial. In Mudgett's view, Navy Federal's agents "do not dial a
I have serious doubts as to whether manually dialing a telephone number on a phone that is connected to a computer system capable of autodialing gives rise to liability under the TCPA. Nonetheless, even if it did, Navy Federal would be entitled to summary judgment because Mudgett has not pointed to evidence from which a fact-finder could reasonably conclude that Martin and Owens placed calls from telephones that were connected to computers capable of autodialing. Mudgett does not submit any evidence from a witness who examined Navy Federal's phone system and determined that Martin and Owens used phones that were physically connected to computers or autodialers. Instead, she relies on excerpts from Navy Federal's "Phone Skills Manual," which she contends shows that Navy Federal's collections agents' phones are connected to Navy Federal's computer system, which in turn is connected to an autodialer. However, the Phone Skills Manual does not allow a reasonable fact-finder to conclude that the collections agents' phones are connected to Navy Federal's computer system. Rather, as far as the Manual indicates, the collections agents' phones are ordinary desk phones that operate independently of Navy Federal's computer system. Although the Manual seems to assume that collections agents will have computers at their desks in addition to phones, it does not suggest that the phones and the computers are interconnected. Thus, on this record, no fact-finder could reasonably conclude that Martin and Owens made calls from telephones that were connected to autodialers.
Accordingly,