Discovery Is Sought to Preserve Ramaswamy Call Records Before They’re Destroyed

Telephone Consumer Protection Act plaintiff Thomas Grant seeks limited expedited discovery to preserve relevant records of calls that Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s 2024 presidential campaign made to Grant and his putative class, said the plaintiff’s motion Thursday (docket 2:24-cv-00281) in U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio in Columbus.

Grant’s TCPA class action alleges Ramaswamy’s campaign, which was suspended Jan. 15, placed prerecorded calls to consumers’ cellphones to promote the candidate’s telephonic town hall events without first obtaining their prior express consent (see 2401240002). Under the circumstances that Grant alleges, a political candidate who doesn’t himself make the calls, but whose official campaign instead makes the calls, “may be held personally liable under the TCPA,” said Grant’s motion.

One of the “only meaningful ways” to identify putative class members in TCPA cases is through “call transmission logs,” said the motion. But not all dialer providers preserve call transmission logs for an extended period of time, it said. In prior robocall cases, Grant’s counsel, Brian Giles of Giles & Harper in Cincinnati, “has encountered dialer providers that in the regular course of their business destroy call records every 90 days,” the motion said.

As a result, to ensure preservation of the call transmission logs needed to identify putative class members and the "violative calls they received," Grant requested that Ramaswamy identify the dialer used to make the calls, it said. Grant’s counsel wanted to serve a preservation notice and try to confirm the dialer provider’s preservation of the call records, it said. If the dialer provider failed to confirm their preservation of records, Grant could serve a subpoena to the dialer provider for those records, it said.

In response, Ramaswamy refused to identify the dialer unless Grant would agree to drop him as a party to the litigation and proceed against only his now-defunct campaign, said the motion. Grant didn’t agree in light of the “well pled allegations” regarding Ramaswamy’s “potential personal liability,” it said. Though the former candidate has said that preservation notices have been sent, if one was sent to the dialer provider, that provider “has failed or otherwise refused to respond,” said the motion. Ramaswamy himself couldn’t confirm that the dialer provider is preserving call records, it said.

As a result, Grant seeks to immediately commence limited discovery to identify the dialer provider and ensure the preservation of call transmission logs reflecting robocalls that Ramaswamy’s campaign made to Grant and his putative class members, said the motion. He seeks an order compelling Ramaswamy to identify the dialer used to transmit the calls and permitting Grant to then serve a subpoena on the dialer provider with a single request for all transmission logs covering calls that the campaign made to Grant and the class members, it said.

Without such an order, the call transmission logs may be destroyed in the regular course of business, as has been Grant’s counsel’s experience, “including specifically in past cases involving political robocalls,” said the motion. In TCPA putative class actions, like this case, courts “regularly find that good cause for expedited discovery exists where there is a risk that call transmission logs that reflect the calls to the putative class may be destroyed as a result of the dialer provider’s normal retention policies,” it said. “In fact, in these circumstances, courts often compel the defendants themselves to retrieve the call transmission logs,” it said.