‘No Such Thing’ as Artificial Voice That Uses a Larynx: TCPA Reply Brief

Lines will need to be drawn “over what constitutes” an automatic telephone dialing system and an artificial voice under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, said plaintiff-appellant Lucine Trim’s reply brief Thursday (docket 22-55517) in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Trim is appealing a lower court’s dismissal of her TCPA complaint against Reward Zone for sending her unwanted telemarketing texts. Her appeal “is unlikely to be the end of the battle between privacy advocates and telemarketers” over the TCPA’s definitions, the brief said. “There is no such thing as a random or sequential telephone number generator,” it said. There’s also “no such thing” as an artificial voice that uses a larynx, syrinx and lungs, as the district court defined it, said the brief. “So how can that possibly be the law?” The brief urged the 9th Circuit to give a “rare scathing opinion explaining” why case law on those issues are “so very wrongly decided,” it said. The 9th Circuit has an opportunity “to give guidance to other reviewing courts as cases like this make their way inevitably back up to the Supreme Court,” it said.