Crunch Fitness
has dropped its request that the Supreme Court decide whether a former gym member can proceed with a lawsuit over a federal robo-texting law.
Instead, the gym and former member, Jordan Marks,
quietly settled their dispute, according to court papers filed with the Supreme Court late
last month.
The move marks an end to Marks' 2014 lawsuit alleging that Crunch violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by sending him three text messages in an 11-month period. That law
prohibits companies from using automated dialers to send messages to consumers without their permission.
Crunch initially argued the lawsuit should be dismissed at an early stage because Marks
hadn't shown the messages were sent via an automated dialer. A trial judge sided with Crunch, but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the fitness company last year. The appellate judges
defined automated dialers broadly, saying they could include devices that stored lists of phone numbers to be called.
In January, Crunch asked the Supreme Court to hear the dispute. Crunch
argued that the 9th Circuit's definition of auto dialers was so sweeping it could expose anyone who uses smartphones to a potential lawsuit.
The 9th Circuit definition of auto dialer is at
odds with a recent ruling issued by a different appellate court -- the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, which recently ruled that Yahoo's texting system was not an auto dialer. That court
adopted a narrower definition, ruling that auto dialers must be capable of calling random or sequential numbers.