Ewing v. SQM US, Inc.

211 F. Supp. 3d 1289, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 143272, 2016 WL 5846494
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. California
DecidedSeptember 29, 2016
DocketCase No.: 3:16-CV-1609-CAB-JLB
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 211 F. Supp. 3d 1289 (Ewing v. SQM US, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. California primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ewing v. SQM US, Inc., 211 F. Supp. 3d 1289, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 143272, 2016 WL 5846494 (S.D. Cal. 2016).

Opinion

ORDER GRANTING MOTION TO DISMISS

Hon. Cathy Ann Bencivengo, United States District Judge

This matter is before the Court on Defendants’ motion to dismiss for lack of standing. The motion has been fully briefed and the Court deems it suitable for submission without oral argument. For the following reasons, the motion is granted and the first amended complaint (“FAC”) is dismissed with prejudice.

I. Allegations in the Complaint

The factual allegations in the FAC are straightforward. On October 21, 2015, Defendants allegedly called Plaintiffs cellular telephone one time using an automatic telephone dialing system (“ATDS”). [Doc. No. 8 at ¶¶ 15-18.] The telephone number that Defendants allegedly called was “assigned to a cellular telephone service for which Plaintiff incurs a charge for incoming calls pursuant to 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(1).” [Id. at ¶ 19.] Plaintiff alleges that he did not provide his cellular telephone number to Defendants or give them permission to call his cellular telephone. [Id. at T21.]

Based on this single alleged telephone call, Plaintiff asserts claims for negligent and willful violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. § 227 (“TCPA”). Plaintiff also seeks to represent a class consisting of others who received telephone calls made with an ATDS to their cellular telephones without their consent within the four years prior to the filing of the complaint.

II. Legal Standard

Defendants bring their motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1). “A Rule 12(b)(1) jurisdictional attack may be facial or factual.” Safe Air for Everyone v. Meyer, 373 F.3d 1035, 1039 (9th Cir. 2004). Defendants state they are making a facial attack, meaning they assert “that the allegations contained in [the FAC] are insufficient on their face to invoke federal jurisdiction.” Id. “The district court resolves a facial attack as it would a [1292]*1292motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6): Accepting the plaintiffs allegations as true and drawing all reasonable inferences in the plaintiffs favor, the court determines whether the allegations are sufficient as a legal matter to invoke the court’s jurisdiction.” Leite v. Crane Co., 749 F.3d 1117, 1121 (9th Cir. 2014).

III. Discussion

Defendants argue that Plaintiff lacks standing to sue because he has not suffered a concrete injury caused by the alleged TCPA violation. The standing to sue doctrine is derived from Article III of the Constitution’s limitation of the judicial power of federal courts to “actual cases or controversies.” Spokeo v. Robins, — U.S. —, 136 S.Ct. 1540, 1547, 194 L.Ed.2d 635 (2016) (citing Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811, 818, 117 S.Ct. 2312, 138 L.Ed.2d 849 (1997)). “The doctrine limits the category of litigants empowered to maintain a lawsuit in federal court to seek redress for a legal wrong.” Id. “[T]he ‘irreducible constitutional minimum’ of standing consists of three elements. The plaintiff must have (1) suffered an injury in fact, (2) that is fairly traceable to the challenged conduct of the defendant, and (3) that is likely to be redressed by a favorable judicial decision.” Id. (citing Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992)). This case primarily concerns the first element.

The first element, injury in fact, “is a constitutional requirement, and ‘it is settled that Congress cannot erase Article Ill’s standing requirements by statutorily granting the right to sue to a plaintiff who would not otherwise have standing.’ ” Spokeo, 136 S.Ct. at 1547-48 (quoting Raines, 521 U.S. at 820, n.3, 117 S.Ct. 2312). “To establish injury in fact, a plaintiff must show that he or she suffered ‘an invasion of a legally protected interest’ that is ‘concrete and particularized’ and ‘actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.’ ” Id. at 1548 (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560, 112 S.Ct. 2130). “ ‘For an injury to be “particularized,’ it ‘must affect the plaintiff in a personal and individual way.’ ” Id. (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560, n.1, 112 S.Ct. 2130). Meanwhile, “[a] ‘concrete’ injury must be ‘de facto’; that is, it must actually exist.” Id. (citing Black’s Law Dictionary 479 (9th ed. 2009)). Therefore, a plaintiff does not “automatically satisf[y] the injury-in-fact requirement whenever a statute grants a person a statutory right and purports to authorize that person to sue to vindicate that right. Article III standing requires a concrete injury even in the context of a statutory violation.” Id. at 1549. A “bare procedural violation, divorced from any concrete harm,” does not satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement of Article III. Id.

“The party invoking federal jurisdiction bears the burden of establishing these elements. Since they are not mere pleading requirements but rather an indispensable part of the plaintiffs case, each element must be supported in the same way as any other matter on which the plaintiff bears the burden of proof, i.e., with the manner and degree of evidence required at the successive stages of the litigation.” Lujan, 504 U.S. at 561, 112 S.Ct. 2130 (internal citations omitted). Here, because Defendants make only a facial attack on standing in connection with their motion to dismiss, the Court only considers whether, assuming the truth of the allegations in the FAC, Plaintiff has Article III standing.1

[1293]*1293The only allegation in the FAC that arguably relates to any injury to Plaintiff is the claim that the cellular telephone Defendants’ called is “assigned to a cellular telephone service for which Plaintiff incurs a charge for incoming calls.” This phrasing mimics the language of the TCPA, which makes it unlawful to make a call using an ATDS “to any telephone number assigned to a ... cellular telephone service ... for which the called party is charged for the call .... ” 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(l)(A)(iii). For the purposes of this motion, the Court assumes that Plaintiff is alleging that he actually incurred a specific charge for Defendants’ call to his cellular telephone.

Even with this assumption, the FAC does not adequately allege standing because it does not, and cannot, connect this claimed charge with the alleged TCPA violation—Defendants’ use of an ATDS to dial his cellular telephone number. Put differently, Plaintiff does not, and cannot, allege that Defendants’ use of an ATDS to dial his number caused him to incur a charge that he would not have incurred had Defendants manually dialed his number, which would not have violated the TCPA.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
211 F. Supp. 3d 1289, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 143272, 2016 WL 5846494, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ewing-v-sqm-us-inc-casd-2016.