TCPA Plaintiff Seeks Call Logs of Every State Farm Agent Going Back 6 Years

Thomas Gebka seeks an order compelling State Farm to produce in class discovery, without redactions, all records and notes for all calls that State Farm or any State Farm agency made from Oct. 10, 2018, to the present, said the plaintiff’s motion to compel Monday (docket 1:22-cv-05546) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago.

Gebka also seeks the disclosure of all “opportunities reports” reflecting every lead that State Farm or its agents received from any vendor in the past six years, said the motion. The requested records are “readily available and highly relevant to the merits and whether class certification is appropriate,” said the motion. Gebka’s October 2022 class action alleges that State Farm “engaged in a national telemarketing campaign to promote its insurance via unsolicited calls to persons who had no prior relationship” with the insurer, in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (see 2210110009), said the motion.

Gebka seeks to represent two nationwide classes of similarly situated persons who received unlawful telemarketing calls from State Farm or its agents, said his motion. One class is composed of those who received calls using an artificial or prerecorded voice and were placed to cellphone numbers without prior express consent, it said. The other class includes call recipients whose residential numbers were listed on the national do not call registry, it said.

During the course of the litigation, Gebka has resisted State Farm’s efforts to stay or phase discovery (see 2302080017). The defendant also has accused the plaintiff of going on a “fishing expedition” with his discovery requests (see 2302010001).

Under State Farm’s direction, its agencies contracted with third-party telemarketing vendors to generate leads to purchase State Farm insurance, said the motion to compel. The vendors, in turn, directed call center partner "subcontractors" to place initial lead-generation telemarketing calls, including calls using an artificial or prerecorded voice, to Gebka and the putative class members, it said. The contact information of the person illegally called was then provided to a State Farm agency for follow-up calls promoting and trying to sell State Farm insurance, it said.

Gebka seeks to compel production of the insurer’s records identifying the vendor sources from which it received each of those leads, plus its records reflecting the State Farm agencies’ follow-up telemarketing calls to those generated leads, said the motion. The defendant has these records for all of its agencies, which include who was called, when the call was made, the source of the lead and other relevant call data, it said.

Yet the insurer has refused to produce the class data, said the motion to compel. Instead it only promised months ago to produce redacted call logs reflecting the outbound calls of only two State Farm agencies, it said. “In short, State Farm is artificially limiting the class discovery” to only two of its agencies and redacting relevant information, even though Gebka seeks two nationwide classes with a class period beginning four years before the filing of the complaint, it said.