What’s Going On With Class Actions Alleging That Businesses That Record Customer-Service Calls Are Violating California’s Invasion of Privacy Act?

Since 2006, companies based outside California have been alert to the potential burdens of class actions under California's Invasion of Privacy Act ("CIPA"), Cal. Penal Code § 630 et seq. The laws of most states, as well as federal law, allow telephone calls to be recorded with the consent of one party to the call. Accordingly, companies in those states usually can record customer service calls for quality-assurance purposes without the need to procure the customer's consent because the call-center employee, as a party to the call, can consent to the recording. California, however, is one of 12 states that allow recording only if all parties to the call consent. (The other so-called "two-party consent" states are Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington.) The plaintiffs' bar has been trying to use California's extremely pro-plaintiff privacy laws, such as the CIPA, to turn this innocuous business practice into an opportunity to extract class-action settlements from companies.

In 2006, the California Supreme Court held that CIPA applies even when one party to the conversation is outside California in a state that authorizes recording with the consent of a single party to the call. Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney, Inc., 39 Cal. 4th 95 (2006). The court explained that, under California's choice-of-law rules, California had the overriding interest in applying its privacy laws, such as CIPA, whenever "national or international firms" headquartered outside of California record "conversations with their California clients or customers." And, like Flanagan v. Flanagan, 27 Cal. 4th 766 (2002), Kearney applied CIPA regardless of the content of the conversations, though that likely was because Kearney involved calls to a financial institution and Flanagan involved calls between family members—i.e., situations where callers arguably have an expectation of privacy. Nonetheless, an onslaught of consumer class actions followed and continue to this day.

Companies facing CIPA suits have been making progress. More and more courts are recognizing that CIPA was not intended to apply to calls to customer-service centers. See Shin v. Digi-Key Corp., 2012 WL 5503847 (C.D. Cal. Sept. 17, 2012); Sajfr v. BBG Commc'ns, Inc., 2012 WL 398991 (S.D. Cal. Jan. 10, 2012). They've also recognized that customer-service calls usually do not involve private information. See Faulkner v. ADT...