Plaintiff Seeks Discovery to Show Defendant ‘Purposefully' Called Fla. Numbers
Arthur Cochran intends to oppose the Dec. 13 motion of Boost Health Insurance to dismiss Cochran’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action (see 2312140005) in which it claims that it didn’t “purposefully avail itself of Florida” when the vendor it…
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hired, Work Business Solutions, made telemarketing calls to Cochran and other individuals into Florida and to Florida area codes, said Cochran’s motion to compel discovery Thursday (docket 4:23-cv-00473) in U.S. District Court for Northern Florida in Tallahassee. In opposing the motion to dismiss, Cochran plans to demonstrate that Boost Health was aware that its vendor was contacting Florida area codes with its telemarketing calls, said his motion. Cochran needs discovery “to learn the extent of that conduct,” but Boost Health “has refused to produce the calling data that evidences how frequently” its vendor was contacting Florida area codes, it said. Boost Health has rejected Cochran’s discovery requests on grounds that the information he seeks isn’t relevant “to the claims and defenses of the parties and is not proportionate to the needs of the case,” said Cochran’s motion. Boost Health also argues that the discovery request “lacks reasonable temporal limitations and predates the time period” in which Cochran alleges to have received contact on behalf of Boost Health, it said. A defendant whose agent makes “tortious calls” to a Florida resident is subject to personal jurisdiction in the Northern District of Florida, it said. Courts evaluating personal jurisdiction in TCPA cases have regularly applied the “effects test” from the 1984 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Calder v. Jones “to evaluate whether a defendant purposefully availed himself of the privileges of doing business within the forum,” it said. Through his discovery request, Cochran is seeking documents and information reflecting that Boost Health was aware that its vendor was calling Florida telemarketing numbers, it said. Such information has been compelled or evaluated by courts to consider the issue, it said. The information he seeks about calls to Florida as part of the same campaign resulting in calls to Cochran is “critical” to responding to Boost Health’s motion to dismiss, “as other courts have relied on similar information in denying motions to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction in TCPA cases,” it said.