Ramsey v. Receivables Performance Management: A $122,500 Win Undone After Duguid

Background

A telecommunications provider placed two of the plaintiff's accounts with Receivables Performance Management, a debt collector. The plaintiff had already sent the creditor a letter asking that it and any affiliated collectors stop contacting him, but the creditor never passed it along. Between February and July 2015, the collector called his cell phone 245 times with a Noble Systems predictive dialer.

The setup was straightforward. Each night, the collector's account database selected accounts using set parameters and built "campaigns," which were simply lists of phone numbers. Those lists were sent to the dialer. The next day, an employee started a campaign by "clicking a button to press play," and the dialer called the numbers in order, routing answered calls to available collectors. The plaintiff's account was flagged as having prior consent, so it went through this list-dialing mode instead of a manual preview mode.

The First Ruling

In 2020, Judge Matthew W. McFarland, who was then assigned to the case, applied the Sixth Circuit's decision in Allan v. Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency. Under Allan, a device that stores numbers and dials them automatically counted as an autodialer. The dialer met this definition and thus the plaintiff received partial summary judgment and $122,500.

Then Came Duguid

In 2021, the Supreme Court decided Facebook v. Duguid. It held that an autodialer must be able to use a random or sequential number generator to store or produce numbers. This abrogated Allan. The defendants moved for reconsideration, and the motion was fully briefed in July 2021. The ruling was issued in September 2026 after reassignment.

The New Answer

The court found reconsideration proper because an intervening change in controlling law is a recognized basis for revisiting an interlocutory order. On the merits:

• "Sequential order" isn't a "sequential number generator." The plaintiff relied on a 2018 Alabama decision treating a system that "orders sequentially" from a debtor list as an autodialer. The court said that decision can't be reconciled with Duguid. Calling numbers from an existing list in order doesn't mean the system generated them.
• The facts showed list-based dialing. The collector's database held numbers tied to specific debtors and built targeted lists from them. This is "automated dialing from a targeted, pre-set list," which the Sixth Circuit's 2025 decision in Fluker v. Ally Financial held was outside the statute's scope.
• No contrary evidence. Aside from the Alabama case, the plaintiff offered nothing to rebut the defendants' evidence that the system didn't use a number generator.

The defendants won summary judgment on the TCPA claim.

What's Left

The Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act claim remains. With no federal claim left, the court let the plaintiff amend to plead diversity jurisdiction before deciding whether to keep the state claim.

Takeaways

• Pre-Duguid wins can be reopened. An interlocutory judgment can be reconsidered if controlling law has changed.
• Predictive dialers calling debtor lists are generally outside the autodialer ban. The question is how numbers are generated, not how quickly they're dialed.
• Cease-contact letters don't always reach the collector. The creditor never passed along this request.

Read the Southern District of Ohio opinion and order.