Some motions to dismiss arrive with a fighting chance. This one arrived with fourteen of the same prerecorded voicemails alleged in the complaint. In Mayhew v. Home Care Pulse, LLC, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 141153 (D. Kan. June 25, 2026), the plaintiff alleged he was treated to fourteen voicemails from the same phone number, each delivering the same generic survey pitch which allgedly violated the TCPA.
The defendant moved to dismiss, arguing the plaintiff had not plausibly alleged that the voice on the other end was actually prerecorded. The Court denied the motion—because the plaintiff did plausibly allege the voicemails were prerecorded--and made clear from the jump that it wasn't interested in splitting hairs: "There are no 'hyper-technical' pleading requirements for claims under § 227(b)(1)(A)(iii)."
Fourteen prerecorded voice messages alleged. From the same number. And several of the messages did not even bother starting at the beginning--at least two of them started mid-sentence. The court noted that a generic, standardized message left on several occasions is enough to infer a prerecorded voice at the pleadings stage. Fourteen substantively identical messages easily cleared that bar.
The defendant did try a bit of wordplay, arguing the plaintiff had alleged the voicemails were merely the "same" but not that they were "identical." The court was unmoved, observing the distinction "to the extent there is one," was not persuasive.
The only people who clearly came out ahead on this motion were the ones billing for it (defense counsel). An argument built on the gap between the words "same" and "identical" in a case involving fourteen generic survey voicemails, several of which began mid-sentence, was not exactly a close call.
The signs of a prerecorded message are exactly what you would expect: it says the same thing every time, sounds robotic, does not address you by name, and every so often it forgets to start at the beginning of the message. Motion to dismiss (easily) denied.
