Court Grants Litigation Stay Pending FCC Petition on Reassigned Phone Numbers

On March 20, a federal judge in the Eastern District of California granted a motion to stay in a TCPA putative class action on primary jurisdiction grounds, in order to allow the FCC to first decide a pending Petition for Declaratory Ruling that raises the following important question: whether callers are liable under the TCPA for making informational, non-telemarketing calls to telephone numbers for which they have obtained valid "prior express consent," but that have been reassigned without the caller’s knowledge.