United Collection Bureau Recording Calls Without Consent California CIPA Class Action

As a debt collector, United Collection Bureau, Inc. must obey many laws and regulations about collection practices. However, this class action is not about debt collection but about privacy. The complaint alleges that United violates the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), part of the California Penal Code, by recording telephone conversatons without the consent of all parties to the calls.

The class for this action is all persons in California whose cell phone conversations were recorded without their consent where those persons had not called United before they received the first call from United or its agents, between August 19, 2021 and August 19, 2022.

The plaintiff in this case, Christopher Jorgens, allegedly incurred a debt and then became delinquent in its payment. At some point, the complaint alleges, United acquired the debt and began trying to collect it from Jorgens.

The complaint alleges that United called Jorgens on September 8, 2021. The complaint claims, “At no time during the call did [United] advise [Jorgens] that it was recording the call.” United spoke with Jorgens on this call for around three minutes, according to the complaint.

The complaint quotes a relevant portion of the law as saying, “Every person who, without the consent of all parties to a communication, intercepts or receives and intentionally records, or assists in the interception or reception and intentional recordation of, a communication transmitted between two cellular radio telephones, a cellular radio telephone and a landline telephone, two cordless telephones, or a cordless telephone and a cellular radio telephone [violates this section].”

According to the complaint, this is a clear “prohibition against such unauthorized recording of cellular communications without the consent of the other party to the communication.”

The complaint alleges, upon information and belief, that the call was between a cellular radio telephone and a landline telephone, and that United intentionally recorded the communication, in a way that was forbidden by CIPA.

It claims that United violated Jorgens’s “constitutionally protected privacy rights by failing to advise or otherwise provide notice at the beginning of the conversation(s) with [Jorgens] that the calls would be recorded, and [United] did not try to obtain [Jorgens’s] consent before such recording.”

“At all times relevant thereto,” the complaint alleges, United “had and followed a policy and practice of using a telecommunications system that enabled it to surreptitiously record cellular telephone communications between [United] and [Jorgens]…”

The complaint claims that the law allows for statutory damages of $5,000 for each occurrence.

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Privacy
Tags: CIPA, Recording Calls Without Consent, Your Privacy