Court Awards $89MM Attorney Fee In TCPA Trial Win–Refuses to Reduce $267MM Judgment Against Debt Collector Defendant

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As I have recently remarked, the TCPA is the biggest cash cow in the history of American class action practice.

Apropos: Friday a court entered an order approving an attorney fee request of $89,116,333.33 in favor of a group of TCPA plaintiff lawyers that successfully pursued a certified TCPA class action to trial against a collector.

Now that’s a payday. Think it’ll encourage more TCPA suits?

The case–Perez v. Rash Curtis & Assocs., Case No. 4:16-cv-03396-YGR, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68161, (N.D. Cal. April 17, 2020)–resulted in a $267MM verdict against the collector related to dialer calls to cell phones obtained via skip tracing. We covered the case last year.

Notably, the Court refused to apply the Golan line of cases–authorizing the reduction of TCPA awards in certified class actions on constitutional grounds–and held that there was no objective way to reduce the award.  The Court does note, however, that at some point the judgment becomes uncollectable and “[TCPA] cases such as these plead for settlement.”

This case calls out for further in-depth analysis. More to come TCPAWorld.

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