The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) potentially touches just about every kind of business, including the business of selling prescription drugs. That is what the Northern District of California grappled with (correctly) in Jackson v. Safeway, Inc., No. 15-cv-04419, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 140763 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 11, 2016). In Jackson, the plaintiff received a telephone reminder from her pharmacy that she was due for an annual flu shot, which prompted her to go in the next day to receive her shot. Id. at **5-6. Of course, what do you do after you receive disease-preventing medical treatment? You file a class action lawsuit dissing the pharmacy for bothering to call. What is the old saying about no good deed?
For the uninitiated, the TCPA is the federal statute passed in the early 1990s that regulates “telemarketing.” We place that word in quotes for two separate reasons. First, we use quotes to demarcate a term of art—the FCC uses the term “telemarketing” to define significant obligations under the Act. Second, we use quotes to indicate irony (picture us making the familiar “air quotes” gesture as you read this post). Although Congress passed the TCPA to cut down on intrusive “telemarketing” calls, many say that the FCC’s regulations do not target “telemarketers” narrowly enough. That makes other businesses who are reaching out to their customers (like our pharmacy) potential targets for abusive litigation. The stakes are high. The statute imposes penalties of up to $1,500 per violation, and in a society where telephones increasingly serve as our windows to commerce and human relations, those penalties can multiple to large numbers quickly.
A particular target for critics of the regulations is a 2012 FCC order that could have, for example, strengthened an exception for calls made within existing business relationships. But the 2012 order instead abolished that exception, among other provisions. A follow-up order issued in 2015 clarified matters, but that also fell short of expectations for many. One example is the FCC’s definition of an “automated telephone dialing system,” which some say is now broad enough to include our iPhones. We are not so sure, but the ambiguity in the rules is most unwelcome. (You can read Reed Smith’s alert on the 2015 order here.)
We are writing about this here because the district court in Jackson invoked two TCPA exceptions that apply to healthcare: (1) The “exigent healthcare treatment exception,” which creates a safe harbor for “exigent” calls that have a “healthcare treatment purpose” and “are not charged to the calling party”; and (2) the “telemarketing health care exception,” which permits automated calls that deliver “health care” messages from HIPAA covered entities and their business associates.
Continue Reading TCPA Health Care Exceptions Properly Applied In California