Portfolio Recovery Class Action Lawsuit Alleges Unlawful Calls to Recycled Numbers

An Ohio woman has filed a Portfolio Recovery class action lawsuit, claiming the company placed repeated robocalls to her number without first getting her consent.

Lead plaintiff Shari L., of Ohio, has recently filed a proposed class action lawsuit against Portfolio Recovery Associates, a publicly traded debt buying company based in Norfolk, Va.

Portfolio Recovery uses mail and telephone calls to recover consumer debt that they have bought. Founded in 1996, it is one of the nation’s largest debt collectors.

Shari claims in her Portfolio Recovery class action lawsuit that this company repeatedly used an automated telephone dialing system to place calls to her and other customers in a manner that violates the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or TCPA, was passed in 1991 regulates the use of automated telephone dialing systems, restricts solicitations by telephone, limits the use of text messaging and regulates when and how a solicitation may be made to a consumer. The TCPA also requires that companies honor the National Do Not Call Registry and ensures that companies may not use a prerecorded voice while calling a resident.

Violations of the TCPA can translate to as much as $1,500 in statutory damages per violation. Over time, a company who violates the TCPA regularly may rack up millions of dollars in potential damages.

Shari claims that Portfolio Recovery Associates, or PRA, used autodialers and prerecorded calls to cell phone subscribers who had reassigned cell phone numbers and to customers who had asked not to be called any longer.

Essentially, this Portfolio Recovery Associates class action lawsuit asserts that people were repeatedly called because they had a reassigned phone number previously assigned to a debtor from whom Portfolio Recovery was trying to recover.

According to Shari’s Portfolio Recovery Associates class action lawsuit “PRA’s autodialed and/or prerecorded calls to consumers’ cellular telephones violate the TCPA because: (1) the telephone owner did not consent to receiving the calls (i.e., the consent, if it was obtained at all, was obtained from the prior owner of that telephone number); and/or (2) the current cellular telephone owner has expressly requested not to receive such calls.”

When someone gives up their cell phone number, that number is eventually recycled and given to someone else. If the previous owner of a cell phone number gave consent to be called by a company, but the new owner did not, that company may be violating the TCPA, this lawsuit claims.

Additionally, the company is accused in this Portfolio Recovery Associates class action lawsuit of using skip tracing services to locate debtors. When this occurred, the lawsuit claims, PRA violated the TCPA because they did not receive express consent to contact the debtor on that phone number.

Furthermore, alleged debtors have complained that Portfolio Recovery often disregards the issue of consent to receive the call. This Portfolio Recovery Associates class action lawsuit claims that “PRA knows or should know that its autodialed calls are placed to non-consenting cellular telephone number subscribers” and that they are responsible for verifying who owns the telephone number before they call.

This Portfolio Recovery Associates Class Action Lawsuit is Case No. 1:17-cv-01895-DAP in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division.

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If you were contacted on your cell phone by a company via an unsolicited text message (text spam) or prerecorded voice message (robocall), you may be eligible for compensation under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

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