Following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540 (U.S. May 16, 2016), it is clear that “Article III standing requires a concrete injury even in the context of a statutory violation,” such that a plaintiff cannot “allege a bare procedural violation, divorced from any concrete harm, and satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement of Article III.” Id. at 1549. Yet, the Court did not go so far as to rule that “the risk of real harm cannot satisfy the requirement of concreteness,” and instead recognized that “the violation of a procedural right granted by statute can be sufficient in some circumstances to constitute injury in fact,” adding that “a plaintiff in such a case need not allege any additional harm beyond the one Congress has identified.” See id. (citations omitted). Since Spokeo, federal courts have reached varying conclusions regarding the “circumstances” under which the violation of a statute constitutes an “injury in fact,” but for cases involving claims under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. § 227 (“TCPA”), most courts have held that “a violation of the TCPA is a concrete injury.” See Rogers v. Capital One Bank (USA), N.A., No. 1:15-cv-4016, 2016 WL 3162592, at *2 (N.D. Ga. June 7, 2016); see also, e.g., Booth v. Appstack, Inc., No. 2:13-cv-1533, 2016 WL 3030256, at *5 (W.D. Wash. May 25, 2016) (finding in TCPA action that “Plaintiffs’ allegations demonstrate ‘concrete injury’ as elucidated in Spokeo”). In Stoops v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., however, the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania distinguished such decisions, and held in what the court described as a “unique” case — involving a plaintiff who admitted to filing TCPA actions “as a business” — that the plaintiff simply “ha[d] not suffered an injury-in-fact and therefore lack[ed] constitutional standing to assert her [TCPA] claim against Defendant.” See No. 3:15-cv-83, 2016 WL 3566266, at *5, 9-13 (W.D. Pa. June 24, 2016).
As the district court in Stoops recognized, the facts underlying the court’s decision are indeed unique. In particular, the plaintiff in the case “ha[d] purchased at least thirty-five cell phones and cell phone numbers with prepaid minutes for the purpose of filing lawsuits under the [TCPA].” Id. at *1. It was, she testified, her “business” to “su[e] offenders of the TCPA.” Id. at *10. In fact, despite living in Pennsylvania, the plaintiff “selected Florida zip codes” when activating the cell phones, to which she explained by testifying that “‘there is a depression in Florida,’” and thus “‘people would be usually defaulting on their loans or their credit cards.’” See id. at *1. Apparently she was correct, as by the time of the court’s decision in Stoops, the plaintiff had already filed “at least eleven TCPA cases in th[e Western District of Pennsylvania]” alone, and “ha[d] sent at least twenty pre-litigation demand letters, although she ‘[did not] know’ [exactly] how many.” See id. Plaintiff’s lawsuit against Wells Fargo involved two of her approximately thirty-five cell phone numbers, and a total of eighty-five alleged phone calls. See id. at *2.
In moving for summary judgment against the plaintiff, Wells Fargo argued, among other things, that “[the p]laintiff lacks Article...
