We don't hear too much from the District of Puerto Rico around these parts. But here's a good one:
Rule 41(d) exists to stop plaintiffs from gaming the system by dismissing and refiling. In Schrader v. TalentMovers LLC, No. 3:26-cv-01492-PAD (D.P.R. Sept. 23, 2026), a defendant tried to use it to un-sign a deal dismissing a prior case.
The plaintiff first sued as a TCPA proposed class in the Middle District of Florida over texts sent to a number on the National Do-Not-Call Registry, which kept coming after he asked them to stop. The defendant answered and started preparing a motion arguing that a text message isn't a "telephone call" under § 227(c)(5).
That motion was never filed. The parties instead signed a joint stipulation dismissing the case without prejudice, "with each party to bear their own attorneys' fees and costs." The court entered an order saying the same.
Two months later, the plaintiff refiled in the District of Puerto Rico, where the defendant is organized and headquartered. The defendant got an extension to respond. Four days later, it filed a Rule 41(d) motion seeking $2,597.26 from the Florida case: $2,585 in attorney's fees and $12.26 for "Electronic Legal Research." It also asked the Court to stay the case until the plaintiff paid, including its own newly extended deadline to respond. "A more perfect case of forum shopping could not exist," the motion said. It did not mention the stipulation.
Forum shopping into the defendant's own hometown is a bold theory.
The plaintiff responded that Rule 41(d) authorizes "costs," not fees. Most circuits allow fees only when the statute behind the original suit defines costs to include them, and the TCPA has no fee-shifting provision. The defendant conceded as much in its own motion. The Ninth Circuit applied that rule in a TCPA case in Moskowitz. The defendant's lead case, Horowitz v. 148 South Emerson Associates LLC, 888 F.3d 13 (2d Cir. 2018), is the minority view. Its facts involved a plaintiff running four parallel suits, not a negotiated dismissal. And then there was the stipulation.
On reply, the defendant tried a new motive: the plaintiff fled the Eleventh Circuit because courts there had rejected the texts-are-calls theory in Davis v. CVS Pharmacy and El Sayed v. Naturopathica, a trend supposedly hardened by Steidinger. The timing, however didn't make sense. Davis and El Sayed were decided in 2025, before the plaintiff chose to file in Florida. Steidinger came down two months after the dismissal. It is hard to flee from a decision that doesn't exist yet.
Even the $12.26 didn't survive. The defendant cited Invessys, Inc. v. McGraw-Hill, 369 F.3d 16 (1st Cir. 2004), which allows computerized research "as part of an attorney's-fee award." That makes the charge a fee, and fees weren't available.
The Court denied the motion in full, "in light of the arguments and authorities presented at Docket Nos. [11] and [21], which the court finds persuasive." It ordered the defendant to answer by October 7. The Court was apparently not persuaded by the Steidinger text are not calls Order because it added that "the court will not entertain motions to dismiss under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) or motions for judgment on the pleadings."
As the court in United Transportation Union v. Maine Central Railroad put it decades ago, defendants "can hardly complain if Plaintiff has . . . been educated by the legal perspicacity of Defendants' counsel and chosen to benefit therefrom."
So the defendant's motion for costs and fees was denied and the Court told the defendant to aswer the complaint; not to file a motion to dismiss or a motion for judgment on the pleadings.
Fantastic.
Garrett Berg Law, P.A. represents the plaintiff in this matter.
