In Clingaman v. Certegy Payment Recovery Services (S.D. Tex. 2011), here, Judge Atlas found no telephonic harassment based purely on the number of calls to the consumer because, in part, “[d]uring roughly the same time period, Plaintiff filed nine (9) similar lawsuits against various other debt collectors. Plaintiff admitted in his deposition that he kept records of telephone calls from debt collectors rather than ask them to stop calling because he hoped to get some form of compensation from them that he could use to pay off his debts.”. Judge Atlas explained:
Plaintiff bases his FDCPA claim on the volume of calls made by Certegy to his telephone number. Plaintiff does not challenge the pattern of the calls, which according to his records all occurred no earlier than 8:00 a.m. and no later than 9:00 p.m. Plaintiff does not allege that Certegy placed repeated calls within a short period of time during the day. It is undisputed that Plaintiff never asked Certegy not to place telephone calls to his home and, indeed, Plaintiff conceded that he did not want the calls to stop because he wanted to track any potential violations of the FDCPA. See Clingaman Depo., p. 186. Therefore, the sole basis for Plaintiff’s complaint is the fifty-five (55) phone calls (accepting Plaintiff’s “Call Log” as true) placed by Certegy between March 4, 2010, and June 18, 2010. Plaintiff’s evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to him, does not raise a genuine issue of material fact regarding whether Certegy placed telephone calls to Plaintiff’s wife with the intent to harass and annoy Plaintiff rather than in a legitimate attempt to locate Plaintiff’s wife and discuss the $30.00 debt with her. Other courts have granted summary judgment in favor of the defendant in similar, yet more egregious, circumstances. In Tucker v. CBE Group, Inc., the court granted summary judgment in defendant’s favor where the defendant made up to seven calls per day to a phone number assigned to the plaintiff and not to his debtor daughter. See Tucker v. CBE Group, Inc., 710 F. Supp. 2d 1301, 1303 (M.D. Fla. 2010). Here, the most calls Certegy made in one day was four and that occurred only twice. Moreover, it is undisputed that the telephone number Certegy was calling was the correct number for debtor Jerry Clingaman. In Carman v. CBE Group, Inc., the court granted summary judgment in favor of a defendant who placed 149 telephone calls to the plaintiff during a two-month period. Carmen v. CBE Group, Inc., __ F. Supp. 2d __, 2011 WL 1102842, *4 (D. Kan. 2011). In Saltzman v. I.C. Sys., Inc., the court granted summary judgment for a defendant who placed between 22 and 60 calls in a five-week period during which the plaintiff did not answer the telephone because she recognized the defendant’s telephone number on her caller ID. Saltzman v. I.C. Sys., Inc., 2009 WL 3190359, *6 (E.D. Mich. Sept. 30, 2009). Here, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Plaintiff, Certegy placed only 55 phone calls to Plaintiff’s wife over a period of three and one-half months. As noted by the court in Saltzman, the evidence “suggests a ‘difficulty of reaching Plaintiff, rather than an intent to harass.’”