Hufnus
Hufnus v. DoNotPay, Inc.
Opinion
Trial Court Opinion
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
MATHEW HUFNUS, Case No. 20-cv-08701-VC
Plaintiff,
ORDER GRANTING MOTION TO
v. DISMISS
DONOTPAY, INC., Re: Dkt. No. 30 Defendant.
DoNotPay’s motion to dismiss is granted. To state a claim under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), Hufnus must allege that DoNotPay sent messages using an “automatic telephone dialing system” (autodialer) within the meaning of the TCPA. See 47 U.S.C. § 227(a)(1). To qualify as an autodialer, a device must have “the capacity to use a random or sequential number generator to either store or produce phone numbers to be called.” See Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, 141 S. Ct. 1163, 1173 (2021). The platform DoNotPay used to contact Hufnus merely processes phone numbers supplied by consumers while signing up for DoNotPay’s services. As alleged in the complaint, DoNotPay’s platform then stores these numbers in a random and/or sequential way; uses a random and/or sequential generator to pull from the list of numbers to send targeted text messages; and uses a random and/or sequential generator to determine the sequence in which to…