JPMorgan Chase Bank reached a $3.75 million settlement in a proposed class action lawsuit alleging the company violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The case James v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, NA (U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida, Case No. 8:15-cv-02424) claimed that Chase had called cell phone numbers using an automatic telephone dialing system, even though the numbers had been reassigned from former customers and the new users had not consented to the calls.

The settlement does not mean that Chase is admitting to, or liable for, any TCPA violations.

From January 1, 2014 through March 22, 2016, Chase allegedly called nearly 675,000 unique cell phone numbers that were originally associated with consumer accounts, but were wrong or reassigned numbers at the time of the call. In those cases, Chase would make a notation indicating that they called a wrong or reassigned number. Chase also had a policy that once it placed that notation on an account indicating a wrong number, it would immediately stop calling that phone number.

While negotiating the settlement, Chase cited the Federal Communications Commission’s July 2015 TCPA Declaratory Ruling and Order, and ACA International’s subsequent lawsuit challenging the ruling, in its defense. The ruling included a one-call safe harbor for calls made to reassigned cell phone numbers, which Chase claimed gave them a viable defense for many of the calls it made. Furthermore, if the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rules in favor of ACA, and finds that the FCC ignored controlling statute in order to expand the TCPA’s scope and reach in a way Congress never intended, then it could seriously hurt plaintiff’s claims, according to Chase.

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