In Stemple v. QC Holdings, Inc., 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 125313 (S.D.Cal. 2014), Judge Bashant certified a TCPA Class comprised of “All persons whose 10-digit cellular telephone numbers with a California area code were listed by an account holder in the Employment and/or Contacts fields of a California customer loan application produced to [Defendant], which were called by [Defendant] using an [ATDS] and/or an artificial or prerecorded voice for the purpose of collecting or attempting to collect an alleged debt from the account holder, between August 13, 2008 and August 13, 2012.” In other words, a class comprised of “references” of the creditor’s customers whose names were given by the customers and whose numbers were called by autodialer. The Court held:
Defendant argues that, since individuals can, under certain circumstances, provide prior express consent to be called at a telephone number other than their own, class certification would require !mini-trials! to determine the third party’s relationship with the loan applicant. However, a quick look at the loan application (ECF No. 39 at Exh. F) distinguishes the facts in this case from those in the cases cited by Defendant. In this case, the loan application requests telephone numbers used by the loan applicant. In a separate “Employment” field, the loan application requests the name of the applicant’s Employer, address and telephone number for the Employer, name of the applicant’s supervisor and telephone number of the applicant’s supervisor. (Id.) This is separate from the personal and work numbers where the applicant identifies he can be reached. Cf. Gutierrez, 2011 WL 579238, at *1 (plaintiff listed his wife’s cellular number as his home phone number on a credit card application). Similarly in the other !Contacts! field of the application, the applicant is requested to list contacts, including nearest relative not living with you! and !landlord! including these individuals’ telephone numbers. This is separate from the telephone numbers where the applicant can be reached. Ultimately, this case can resolve the legal issue as to whether this factual scenario was sufficient to allow the Defendant to then reach out to these individuals assuming prior express consent. The overall factual scenario can be ascertained by looking at the loan application and this predominates over any individual factual scenarios. This is particularly true in light of the Court’s amendment of the class definition to exclude any individuals who were actually loan applicants. Defendant further argues that the plan for noticing the class is unworkable. (ECF No. 54 at pp. 17-18.) However, Plaintiff proposes using a reverse look-up to identify class members. (ECF No. 61 at p. 10.) The loan application also identifies names, telephone numbers and, in some cases, even addresses of putative class members. (See ECF No. 39 at Ex. F.) Noticing the class members is not any more unworkable than any other class involving thousands of members. A class action is the superior method of proceeding in this case, particularly since there is a common question that predominates regarding express prior consent by a third [*26] party contact in a loan application. Therefore, Plaintiff’s Motion for Class Certification under Rule 23(b)(3) is GRANTED.
The Court refused to strike the testimony of Ilya Evdokimov, a contractor with Electronic & Speech Discovery, Inc., who was retained by the Plaintiff to extract cellular telephone numbers from the loan applications and then, using computer software, to compare them to the cellular telephone numbers called by Defendant to collect debts.