Or so says a judge in Texas. See Court Dismisses Multi-Million Dollar Lawsuit - Articles - PaymentsSource for the details. I haven't had a chance to look up the case in Pacer but it sounds like it might be interesting.
Was there ever any case law at the appellate level backing this idea? It would seem like if there was, the court would not have dismissed this suit.
OK, I've had a chance to read some of the documents... Reference info: U.S. District Court, Western District of Texas (El Paso) CIVIL CASE #: 3:08-cv-00215-FM 1) this was a very poorly crafted complaint (but, I've seen worse) 2) in reading the memorandum of law that describes the basis on which the plaintiff's motion to dismissed is based. The key legal point, here, is that federal law does not trump state law in matters of contract law. In this case, the memo asserts that because the wireless industry was deregulated section 415 doesn't apply. They say that because the reasonableness of the rates is not in question, there's no grounds for federal pre-emption. From the memorandum: The memorandum then goes on for another 15 pages of mind-numbing legal arguments. Lots of good references if you're interested in applying the federal SOL. So. Lesson learned, here, is be sure to dispute the reasonableness of your cell phone bill when claiming federal pre-emption of your state's SOL. If it has an early termination fee, you should be in pretty good company when claiming that the fee is/was unreasonable.
It only applies to TX. It is not binding on the rest of the country. I see an appeal in the future for this case.
Excuse me, but who repealed or superceded the 2 year federal law? Two lawyers on opposite sides of a table (bench) can't do that even if one is a judge. Congress can repeal it's own laws, the United States Supreme Court can rule that a law either applies in some certain instances or circumstances or is unconstitutional, or Congress can nullify a law by superceding it in another law but those are the only mechanisms I know of that can make a federal law invalid. An example of that is the gold standard argument that was popular a few years back. The popular argument was that gold coin was still the only legal currency of the land because Congress had never passed any law stating that gold was no longer the legal currency of the land which was and as far as I know never has been changed. But the gold standard was replaced as currency by simply making silver the new backing medium. The gold standard was thus never repealed but rather superceded by the newer law. So what law either repealed the two year statute of limitations or lengthened it? The Texas court is a court of inferior jurisdiction. If the loser in this case don't appeal that ruling some other court(s) will hang it's hat on that ruling and yes, it will most likely get to appellate court sooner or later.
I don't claim to understand all the legal reasons behind the judge's dismissal, I'm just describing the argument put forth in this case. What I take away from this: 1) be sure to dispute the reasonableness of the telephone charges of the underlying debt. In many cases, the charges stem from or include unpaid early termination fees which are unreasonable in many people's opinion. Adding this to your complaint costs nothing and prevents this agument from being used to say the federal SOL doesn't apply. 2) an appeal has been filed in this case so, this case is far from a slamh-dunk precident as the collection industry might wish. 3) the argument applied (if I'm reading it correctly) isn't so much that federal law is superceded by state law, but that the federal law doesn't apply in this case. As I read it, the defense is claiming that the federal law applies to interstate tarriffs which were not disputed by the plaintiff (i.e. the reasonableness argument) so because of that the resulting SOL from that law doesn't apply either. 4) the complaint wasn't very air tight so this is a case I see the collection industry getting falsely excited about. IMO, as a precident (which it really isn't until after the appeal), it's pretty lame.
Looks to me like there were quite a few errors and miscalculations in the case. One of them is the deregulation issue. As far as I know cell phones were never regulated in the first place. The phone companies were regulated for years but to the best of my knowledge the cell phone industry never was. Several years ago I was chasing down an I.D. theft situation where a kid in H.S. lost his wallet. Someone found it and used it to get a cellphone and then defaulted on it. A few years later the ex-student, well over 21 years old, tried to get a cellphone through the same provider and got turned down because of the previous debt. In the processs I checked with the state utilities agency to see if they might be able to suggest a remedy and was told that they regulate land lines but not cell phones so I'm at least partly basing my thoughts that cell phones were never regulated in the first place. Of course, I could easily be wrong on that point. In my personal opinion, a class action lawsuit should never be filed except in certain rare situations but attorneys seem to love them because of the outlandish amounts of money they can earn that way. Secondly, I also tend to think that state court issues should be taken up in state court and not in federal court most of the time. Of course, that's just a personal feeling and nothing more.
