Alston & Bird Class Action Roundup Highlights TCPA, AI and Privacy Litigation Trends

Alston & Bird LLP is highlighting developments involving ringless voicemail, artificial intelligence, digital consent and biometric privacy in its latest Class Action & MDL Roundup, offering businesses a look at litigation trends that could carry implications for the accounts receivable management industry.

The firm’s Q1 2026 roundup reviews significant class-action decisions across consumer protection, privacy and data security, employment, securities, product liability and other areas. For ARM professionals, several of the most relevant developments involve technologies increasingly used for consumer communications and digital engagement, including prerecorded messages, online agreements and voice technology.

Ringless Voicemail Case Highlights TCPA Class-Action Risk

One of the roundup’s most directly relevant cases is Garvey v. Gaitan, a Telephone Consumer Protection Act lawsuit involving ringless voicemail technology.

According to Alston & Bird, a federal court in Nevada certified a proposed class arising from prerecorded ringless voicemails allegedly sent by a real estate agent. The complaint alleged that the agent obtained homeowner contact information from withdrawn or expired online property listings and sent prerecorded messages to those consumers’ phone numbers.

The court found that the plaintiff satisfied the requirements for class certification. Alston & Bird noted that the defendant did not have documentation demonstrating that she had obtained consent from the plaintiff or other class members before sending the messages.

Although the case does not involve debt collection, the underlying issues have relevance for organizations using automated communications. Consent documentation can become particularly important when a plaintiff seeks to move from an individual TCPA claim to litigation involving a proposed class.

Online Consent and Arbitration Remain Important Litigation Issues

The roundup also examines Dahdah v. Rocket Mortgage LLC, a Sixth Circuit case addressing whether a consumer was bound by an arbitration provision presented through an online agreement.

The plaintiff visited LowerMyBills.com to explore refinancing opportunities, entered personal information and clicked “Calculate” buttons to obtain offers. According to the roundup, text beneath the buttons disclosed that clicking constituted consent to hyperlinked terms of use containing an arbitration provision.

After Rocket Mortgage allegedly placed at least eight sales calls to the plaintiff, he filed a TCPA class action. A lower court denied Rocket Mortgage’s attempt to compel arbitration, but the Sixth Circuit reversed.

Alston & Bird described the disclosure as a “hybrid,” or “sign-in wrap,” agreement and said the appeals court found that it satisfied the applicable California contract-law test.

The ruling provides another example of courts examining the details of digital interfaces when determining whether consumers have agreed to contractual terms. For receivables businesses operating consumer portals, online payment systems and other self-service platforms, the placement and presentation of disclosures can have consequences when the enforceability of an agreement is challenged.

AI Voice Technology Emerges as a Class-Action Issue

Alston & Bird also identifies litigation involving artificial intelligence as an area businesses should watch.

As part of the roundup, the firm highlights what it describes as an uptick in lawsuits involving AI voice agents and AI-powered call monitoring services. Alston & Bird Privacy, Cyber & Data Strategy counsel Dorian Simmons discusses litigation involving those technologies and measures businesses can consider to mitigate risk.

The roundup itself does not provide a detailed written analysis of the underlying AI cases, so its characterization should not be read as establishing how courts will ultimately treat AI voice systems. It does, however, identify an emerging litigation area that may be particularly relevant to businesses adopting automated consumer communication, speech analytics and call-monitoring technologies.

That development bears watching within receivables management as agencies, creditors and technology providers evaluate AI-assisted communications and contact-center tools.

Biometric Privacy Case Adds Another Voice-Technology Consideration

A separate case highlighted by Alston & Bird illustrates another potential legal issue surrounding voice technology.

In Zaluda v. Apple Inc., an Illinois state court certified a class alleging Apple’s Siri voice assistant violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. The plaintiffs alleged Siri created, captured, collected, stored, and distributed biometric identifiers associated with users’ voices.

According to the roundup, the court found commonality and predominance because the case involved speaker and speech-recognition processes applied uniformly to Siri users. The court rejected Apple’s argument that differences involving devices, user behavior, and changes to Siri’s functionality prevented class certification.

The case concerns Apple’s technology rather than receivables communications, and the ruling does not mean ordinary call recording or voice processing automatically constitutes biometric-data collection. It does, however, illustrate the privacy questions that can arise when technology goes beyond recording audio and allegedly generates identifying biometric information from a person’s voice.

Data Tracking Litigation Continues to Develop

Alston & Bird also discusses In re Meta Pixel Tax Filing Cases, litigation involving allegations that Meta Pixel transmitted sensitive information from online tax-filing websites without users’ consent.

The plaintiffs asserted claims under several provisions of the California Invasion of Privacy Act and California’s Unfair Competition Law. A federal court denied class certification after finding that the proposed class definitions had expanded beyond the scope of the operative complaint, creating individualized questions involving statutes of limitations and the particular information collected from users.

While the ruling favored the defendants at the class-certification stage, the underlying dispute reflects continued scrutiny of third-party tracking and analytics technologies operating on websites containing sensitive consumer information.

Organizations handling financial information may therefore have reason to evaluate what third-party technologies operate across their websites and consumer-facing portals, what information those technologies receive, and what disclosures or consent mechanisms accompany their use.