LoanDepot Is Accused of TCPA Wrongdoing for 26th Time Since 2014

Two class actions filed Friday allege loanDepot sent telemarketing texts or made calls using artificial or prerecorded voice messages without consent to cellphone numbers listed for long periods of time on the national do not call registry, in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Court records show they were the 25th and 26th TCPA actions filed against the home mortgage lender since March 2014.

In one of Friday’s class actions, plaintiff Michelle Finn alleged in U.S. District Court for Central California in Los Angeles (docket 8:23-cv-00737) that LoanDepot uses telemarketing and “cold calling” with a prerecorded voice message without first obtaining the consumer’s prior express written consent. Finn seeks injunctive relief requiring loanDepot to cease violating the TCPA, said her complaint. She also seeks statutory damages for members of her proposed class, it said.

Finn alleges she received at least five prerecorded telemarketing calls from loanDepot to a number she had listed on the national DNC registry since November 2017, said her complaint. The prerecorded calls said loanDepot was contacting Finn to solicit her interest in filing a home lending application. Finn didn’t give her consent for loanDepot to call her cellphone, it said. The “unauthorized” solicitation phone calls she received from loanDepot harmed her “in the form of annoyance, nuisance, and invasion of privacy,” it said.

In Friday’s other class action, plaintiff Lee Abrahamian seeks damages for the “illegal and unlawful” text messages and calls that loanDepot made to his cellphone number, listed on the national DNC registry since October 2007, said his complaint (docket 2:23-cv-00728) in U.S. District Court for Arizona in Phoenix. The calls and texts “were unwanted,” violated and disturbed Abrahamian’s privacy, and caused him injury, including by occupying and using his cellphone “and depriving him of its use for wanted communications,” it said.

Abrahamian didn’t consent or give permission to receive calls or text messages from loanDepot “for any purpose, including for purposes of being contacted about a mortgage loan,” said his complaint. He didn’t “make an inquiry or application with loanDepot for a home equity loan or any other product or service,” and Abrahamian didn’t have “an established business relationship with loanDepot at any time,” it said. LoanDepot nevertheless “placed several solicitation and marketing calls and text messages” to his cellphone number for the purposes of encouraging him “to purchase a home equity loan or other products and services from loanDepot,” it said.

Of the 26 TCPA actions filed against loanDepot since March 2014, court records show 17 were terminated through settlement or voluntary dismissal. The nine still-active cases include the two class actions that were filed Friday.

In one of those nine active cases, pro se plaintiff Mabel Arredondo alleges loanDepot inundated her with at least 18 unauthorized automated text messages in a three-month period (see 2210250045). U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone Western Texas in El Paso has ordered jury selection in Arredondo’s case to begin Dec. 15 (see 2301300031).

A trial on Arredondo’s allegations could give loanDepot the opportunity to test its theory that the TCPA is unconstitutional. Application of the TCPA, as interpreted by the FCC, violates the First Amendment “because such application relies upon content-based restrictions of protected speech,” said the mortgage lender in its Dec. 19 answer to Arredondo's complaint (see 2212200014). LoanDepot also argued the TCPA is “unconstitutionally vague” because the statute’s restrictions don’t give “a person of ordinary intelligence adequate notice of the conduct that is prohibited,” it said then.

LoanDepot further argued that a TCPA award of punitive or statutory damages would be unconstitutional because it would violate the 14th Amendment's due process clause and the Eighth Amendment's excessive fines clause. The amount of damages prescribed by the TCPA is “so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportionate to the offense and obviously unreasonable,” though the TCPA’s statutory damages clause in and of itself is constitutional, it said then.