TCPA insurance used to be very difficult to come by but slowly carriers are starting to write policies to protect companies from TCPA liability.
Most of the policies are low limit high deductible affairs– $1MM is the max that I have seen, and we all know that doesn’t go very far in TCPAWorld.
But perhaps it goes far enough, at least in some cases.
For instance, in Daughter v. Credit Bureau Services2025 WL 1618354 (S.D. Tex. June 6, 2025) the parties agreed to settle a TCPA class action for $850,000.00.
The class consisted of:
All persons throughout the United States to whose cellular telephone number Credit Bureau Services Association placed an artificial or prerecorded voice call from December 2, 2019 through February 11, 2025.
This is a bit of an overly broad class since the Defendant surely had consent forsomeof the messages it was leaving. But better to have a broad class for the same amount of money (especially when it is sonebody else’s money.)
In assessing the settlement the court noted the defendant really didnt have much money to spend here:
Additionally, the parties represent that Defendant is a very small debt collector that employs less than a handful of collectors, and its only applicable insurance policy, which is eroding, limits TCPA class action liability coverage to $1,000,000. So after a year-and a-half of contested litigation, the parties represent that the $850,000 settlement fund almost certainly amounts to something very close to a real-world maximum recovery for settlement class members.
Get it?
Since the policy limits were $1MM and eroding–i.e. the cost of defense comes out of the policy limits– the plaintiff’s counsel agreed to accept what was essentially a policy limit demand.
So the policy is wiped out but the small defendant lives on– and crucially its officers and directors weren’t sued individually.
That last piece may be the true value of insurance– providing a parachute that keeps company managers out of trouble. In the absence of insurance these individuals might end up sued personally to make up for the underfunded enterprise that made the calls.
Something to think about.
