To file a TCPA lawsuit, you identify which provision of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act the caller violated, document every illegal call or text with dates and numbers, and file a complaint in small claims, state, or federal court within four years of each violation. The statute lets you recover $500 per illegal call, text, or fax, and up to $1,500 per violation if the caller acted knowingly or willfully.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 USC 227 – Restrictions on Use of Telephone Equipment The process is workable without a lawyer for small cases, but each step has a mistake that will sink an otherwise good claim.
Confirm the Calls Actually Violated the TCPA
Before filing anything, match the calls you received to a specific prohibition. The most commonly litigated categories are prerecorded or artificial-voice calls to your cell phone without prior express consent, prerecorded telemarketing calls to your home phone, calls or texts made with an automatic telephone dialing system, National Do Not Call Registry violations, and continued calls from a company after you told it to stop.
The autodialer category is narrower than most people assume. In 2021 the Supreme Court held that equipment qualifies as an ATDS only if it uses a random or sequential number generator to store or produce numbers. Systems that dial from a preloaded list of contacts do not count, even when the dialing is automated.2Supreme Court of the United States. Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid (04/01/2021) If your caller used a predictive dialer running from a contact list, build the claim on the prerecorded-voice, Do Not Call, or company-specific do-not-call provisions instead.
Do Not Call Registry claims have their own threshold. Your number must have been on the registry for at least 31 days, and you must have received more than one violating call from the same entity within a 12-month period before you can sue.3Federal Trade Commission. National Do Not Call Registry FAQs4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 US Code 227 – Restrictions on Use of Telephone Equipment A single Do Not Call violation is not enough on its own.
Consent is the central issue in most cases. For marketing calls or texts to your cell phone, the caller needs your prior express written consent. Under the FCC’s one-to-one consent rule that took effect January 27, 2025, that consent must go to a single identified seller and cover marketing logically related to the interaction where you gave it.5Federal Communications Commission. One-to-One Consent Rule for TCPA Prior Express Written Consent If you previously consented, you can revoke at any time by any reasonable method — saying stop to a live agent, replying STOP to a text, sending an email. Once you revoke, the caller has 10 business days to stop.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 USC 227 – Restrictions on Use of Telephone Equipment Every contact after that window is a separate $500 violation.
Some automated calls are exempt. The FCC allows limited-volume calls from healthcare providers to patients, financial institutions notifying you of account activity like fraud alerts, package delivery notifications, and tax-exempt nonprofits calling residential lines.6Federal Register. Exemptions Implemented Under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 These exemptions cannot include advertising or debt collection content and come with strict volume caps. Confirm the calls you received don’t fall inside one.
Watch the Four-Year Clock
You have four years from the date of each violation to file. The TCPA itself doesn’t set a limitations period, so courts apply the federal four-year catch-all. The clock runs separately on each call or text, so older calls fall off as new ones happen. If you’ve been getting unwanted calls for years, the ones outside the four-year window are gone; the ones inside it are still actionable.
Document Every Call and Text
Evidence decides these cases. Judges won’t take your word, and your memory won’t hold up in a deposition six months from now. For each unwanted contact, record the exact date and time, the number that appeared, and the number it was received on. Screenshot texts showing the sender and the message body. Save voicemails instead of deleting them after listening. Pull your call logs from your carrier; those are third-party records that a call happened when you say it did.
Identifying the responsible company is where most self-represented plaintiffs get stuck, because caller ID is often spoofed. Work from whatever the call or message itself gives you: company names spoken in the message, URLs in texts, callback numbers, names of live agents. If you spoke to anyone, write down what you said, especially any instruction to stop. A screenshot of a STOP reply to a text is direct proof that consent was revoked and everything after it is illegal.
Send a Demand Letter First
A written demand letter to the company’s legal or compliance department isn’t required, but it often produces a settlement without a lawsuit. Many companies will pay a few hundred dollars to close a small claim rather than pay a lawyer to defend it. A useful letter identifies you, lists the dates and nature of each contact, cites the TCPA provisions violated, states your total potential statutory damages, and proposes a specific settlement figure. Send it by certified mail so you have delivery proof. If the company ignores it, that indifference becomes evidence supporting willfulness later.
Pick the Right Court
Both state and federal courts can hear TCPA cases. The Supreme Court confirmed federal jurisdiction in 2012.7Justia US Supreme Court. Mims v. Arrow Financial Services, LLC, 565 US 368 (2012) Which venue makes sense depends on the size of your claim.
For a handful of violations, small claims court is usually the right choice. No lawyer needed, low filing fees, simplified procedures, quick timelines. State limits generally run from $2,500 to $25,000, with most states capping claims at $5,000 or $10,000. Ten illegal calls at $500 each fits comfortably in most small claims courts. Some small claims courts don’t award treble damages, so you may be limited to the base $500 per call there.
State or federal court is the right venue when your damages exceed the small claims cap or you want to pursue treble damages for willful violations. The TCPA does not award attorney’s fees to prevailing plaintiffs.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 US Code 227 – Restrictions on Use of Telephone Equipment Your lawyer gets paid from your recovery, so the math has to work: a one-third contingency on a $5,000 claim leaves you with less than you’d net representing yourself in small claims. Attorney representation typically makes sense when you’re looking at dozens or hundreds of violations.
Draft and File the Complaint
The complaint starts the lawsuit. It needs to name the defendant, describe what they did with dates, times, and the nature of each unwanted contact, cite the TCPA provisions they violated, and state the relief you want. Ask for both money damages and an injunction ordering them to stop contacting you; courts can award both.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 USC 227 – Restrictions on Use of Telephone Equipment
File the complaint with the court clerk and pay the filing fee. Fees vary widely by court; small claims fees are modest, civil filing fees in state and federal court are higher. Get the clerk to stamp your copy.
Serve the Defendant
Filing isn’t enough. You must formally deliver the summons and complaint to the defendant through service of process. You can’t mail it yourself. Common options are a local sheriff’s deputy or a private process server, who hand-delivers the papers. Private process servers typically charge $20 to $100 depending on location and how hard the defendant is to find. Serve a corporate defendant through its registered agent, which you can look up in the secretary of state’s business filings for the state where the company is registered.
What Happens After You File
Once served, the defendant typically has 20 to 30 days to file an answer admitting or denying each allegation and raising defenses. If the case moves past the pleadings, it enters discovery: written questions, document requests, and sometimes depositions. TCPA discovery usually focuses on the defendant’s dialing technology, their consent records, and their internal calling procedures. If your case turns on whether the equipment is an ATDS, you may need a forensic technology expert, which adds real cost.
Most TCPA cases settle. The per-violation damages make the math obvious to both sides, and defendants know exactly what their exposure is. If a defendant offers to settle, don’t jump at the first number. Multiply your total violations by $500, or $1,500 if you have strong willfulness evidence, and negotiate from there.
What You Can Recover
For violations of the autodialer and prerecorded-voice restrictions under subsection (b), damages are your actual loss or $500 per violation, whichever is greater. For Do Not Call violations under subsection (c), the statute allows up to $500 per call, and the court has discretion on the exact amount.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 US Code 227 – Restrictions on Use of Telephone Equipment Every illegal call, text, or fax is a separate violation, so totals climb fast.
If the defendant acted knowingly or willfully, the court can treble the award up to $1,500 per violation.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 USC 227 – Restrictions on Use of Telephone Equipment Willfulness doesn’t require an intent to break the law. Continuing to call after you told them to stop, or ignoring a revocation of consent, is the sort of conduct courts treat as willful. An injunction adds real value beyond the money: if the defendant keeps calling after a court order, they face contempt.
Money you recover is generally taxable. The IRS treats damages as taxable income unless they compensate for physical injury or physical sickness, and TCPA damages don’t qualify.8Internal Revenue Service. Tax Implications of Settlements and Judgments Factor that in when evaluating any settlement offer.
Defenses You Should Expect
Build your case with the standard defenses in mind. The most common is prior express consent — the defendant will point to a website form, contract, or checkbox where you supposedly agreed to be contacted. This is why proof of revocation matters so much: even if you did consent originally, showing when you revoked it moves every later call into the violation column.
After Facebook v. Duguid, defendants routinely argue their dialer isn’t an ATDS because it works from a stored list rather than a random or sequential generator.2Supreme Court of the United States. Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid (04/01/2021) For Do Not Call claims, the statute gives defendants a safe harbor if they can prove they established and implemented reasonable procedures to prevent violations.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 US Code 227 – Restrictions on Use of Telephone Equipment Defendants may also argue the call fell under an FCC exemption for informational, healthcare, or financial-account messages.6Federal Register. Exemptions Implemented Under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 And in cases involving lead generators or marketing chains, expect an argument that some other company actually made the calls.
The plaintiffs who lose these cases are almost always the ones who couldn’t prove the basics: that the call happened, that it was illegal, and that this defendant was responsible. Everything above — the documentation, the consent evidence, the identification work — exists to close those three gaps before the defendant tries to open them.