## Facts

- Melody Stoops purchased and activated prepaid Tracfone cell phones in June 2014, receiving numbers assigned based on zip codes she selected.
- Although she lived in Pennsylvania, she chose Florida zip codes associated with economically depressed areas, expecting more debt-collection calls.
- Stoops acquired at least thirty-five phones and maintained them by purchasing airtime to ensure the phones could receive additional calls.
- Stoops testified she bought the phones to “sue the collectors,” treated TCPA litigation as a business, and wanted calls rather than avoidance of them.
- Wells Fargo placed automated or prerecorded calls to some of the assigned numbers while attempting to reach its own customers.
- Stoops alleged TCPA violations based on lack of prior express consent and claimed harms including invasion of privacy, wasted time, aggravation, and the cost of minutes.

## Issues

1. Whether a plaintiff has Article III standing to sue under the TCPA when she intentionally acquired phones and numbers to receive calls and file TCPA suits, making the alleged injuries self-inflicted.
2. Whether the plaintiff falls within the TCPA’s zone of interests where her purpose was to generate litigation rather than protect privacy from unwanted calls.

## Decision

- The court granted Wells Fargo’s motion for summary judgment and denied Stoops’s cross-motion.
- The court held Stoops lacked Article III standing because she did not suffer a concrete injury of the type the TCPA targets; the alleged harms were voluntarily incurred as part of her plan to receive calls.
- The court also held Stoops lacked prudential (zone-of-interests) standing because her interests were not those the TCPA protects.
- A later motion by Stoops to amend the judgment was denied.

## Legal Principles

- Article III requires a concrete and particularized injury-in-fact; a plaintiff may not create standing by deliberately causing or inviting the alleged harm.
- Receipt of unlawful robocalls can be a cognizable injury under the TCPA, but the standing analysis depends on whether the plaintiff experienced the kind of privacy/nuisance harm the statute addresses.
- The TCPA’s protected interests center on preventing unwanted and intrusive calls and safeguarding subscriber privacy; plaintiffs pursuing calls to generate statutory-damages litigation may fall outside the statute’s zone of interests.
- Summary judgment is appropriate where undisputed facts show the plaintiff lacks constitutional and prudential standing, eliminating federal jurisdiction over the TCPA claim.

## Conclusion

The court entered summary judgment for Wells Fargo, concluding that a plaintiff who obtained numerous cell phones to invite autodialed or prerecorded calls and sue over them did not suffer a concrete TCPA-type injury and was not within the TCPA’s protected consumer-privacy interests.


Stoops v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 197 F. Supp. 3d 782 (W.D. Pa. 2016)