District Court Dismisses TCPA Complaint Because Plaintiff Failed to Follow Defendant’s Opt-Out Instructions

By Joseph C. Wylie II, Molly K. McGinley, Lexi D. Bond

Last week a New Jersey federal district court dismissed a putative Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) class action against Kohl’s Department Stores Inc. (“Kohl’s”), Viggiano v. Kohl’s, Case No. 17-0243-BRM-TJB, because plaintiff Amy Viggiano failed to unsubscribe from Kohl’s text messages in the matter in which Kohl’s instructed.

In her putative class action, Viggiano admitted that she had consented to receiving text messages initially, but claimed that she changed her mind and relayed this message to Kohl’s.  Viggiano alleged that she sent multiple messages to Kohl’s expressing that she no longer wanted to receive any messages, including messages like “I don’t want these messages anymore.”  However, she acknowledged that she never texted the word “STOP” to the defendant, a point which was the focus of Kohl’s motion to dismiss.

Kohl’s argued that it provided a direct opt-out mechanism for customer messaging in compliance with FCC requirements.  The terms and conditions to Kohl’s mobile sales alerts instruct customers to respond with one of several words in order to opt-out of future messaging.  The opt-out mechanism is triggered by words like STOP, CANCEL, and UNSUBSCRIBE.  Viggiano did not text any of the single-word commands that Kohl’s instructed would terminate the text alerts, but instead sent several sentence-long messages.  Kohl’s demonstrated that Viggiano received an automated text in reply to her messages which stated “Sorry we don’t understand the request!  Text SAVE to join mobile alerts . . . Reply HELP for help, STOP to cancel.”  Even accepting the facts in the complaint as true, the court found that Viggiano did not plausibly allege that she had a reasonable expectation that by sending the messages in question, she effectively communicated a request for revocation.  Further, Viggiano did not allege that Kohl’s had “deliberately design[ed] systems or operations in ways that make it difficult or impossible to effectuate revocations.”  In fact, the court found that the facts in the complaint suggested Viggiano herself adopted a method of opting out that made it difficult or impossible for defendant to honor her request.  In dismissing the case, the court rejected Viggiano’s argument that her messages were “unequivocal written withdrawals of consent.”

This decision follows a case with similar facts from the Central District of California, Epps v. Earth Fare, Inc., No. 16-8221, 2017 WL 1424637, at *6 (C.D. Cal. Feb. 27, 2017), which resulted in dismissal on the same grounds.  Taken together, these cases suggest that where subscribers to text message alerts are provided with clear instructions on how to revoke consent, a plaintiff’s failure to follow those instructions may provide an effective defense to a claim under the TCPA.