FRIENDLY FIRE?: Court Allows American Honda Finance to Sue its Own Customer in TCPA Suit– Won’t Allow Suit for Conspiracy Against Plaintiff

It seems like wrong number TCPA class actions are all the rage again.

I recently wrote about Assurance IQ’s $20+MM TCPA settlement that likely lead to the company being shuttered. That was all about wrong numbers.

Citibank also just agreed to a $20+MM TCPA settlement that I haven’t blogged about yet to allow the claims process to run without interference.

And now, it seems, American Honda Finance Corp. is turning summersaults in a wrong number case arising out of debt collection efforts.

In Shammam v. American Honda Finance Corp., 2024 WL 4596405 (S.D. Cal. Oct. 28, 2024) Honda decided to amend its answer to add a suit against its customer and against plaintiff for fraud. The court allowed it to sue its customer but not the plaintiff.

Here’s what happened.

This guy Danny Barka owned something called ILS Labs, Inc. and bought a vehicle of some kind back in 2020 financed through Honda Finance.

Apparently Plaintiff is Barka’s…