Greenspoon Marder’s TCPA and arbitration team of Jeff Backman, John Pelzer and Roy Taub secured an important appellate victory in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
In the case of Cynthia Michelle Sessoms v. USHEALTH Advisors, LLC, the Fourth Circuit found that a marketing partner like USHEALTH can rely on a website’s Terms of Use, including its arbitration clause, even if it did not sign the agreement directly. By overturning a lower court’s decision, the Court ruled that USHEALTH can require arbitration in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) class action. The case has been sent back to the trial court with instructions to move the dispute into private arbitration and pause the lawsuit.
The lawsuit was filed by Sessoms, claiming she received a prerecorded marketing call without giving prior consent, in violation of the TCPA. USHEALTH responded by asking the court to send the case to arbitration. It pointed to a Terms of Use agreement Sessoms had accepted when submitting her information on a lead-generation website run by NextGen Leads, LLC and its affiliate FirstQuoteHealth.
That agreement included a broad arbitration clause covering disputes related to the website and any related services. However, the district court denied USHEALTH’s request, reasoning that USHEALTH—because it did not sign the agreement—could not enforce it.
USHEALTH appealed to the Fourth Circuit.
The key question was whether USHEALTH qualified as a third-party beneficiary of the Terms of Use. Under Delaware law, a non-signing party can enforce a contract if the agreement was intended to benefit them.
The Fourth Circuit found that USHEALTH met that standard.
The court highlighted that:
- The website clearly described itself as a lead generator
- Users submitting information agreed to be contacted by third parties
- The site operator did not itself provide insurance quotes, instead it relied on marketing partners to do that
In short, the lead generation setup depended on companies like USHEALTH. Because of that, the Court concluded that benefiting those partners was a material purpose of the agreement.
The Court explained that when users request insurance quotes, they are effectively asking to be contacted by third-party providers. Since the website’s business model depends on sharing those leads, the relationship between the site and its marketing partners is central, not secondary.
That made it reasonable for USHEALTH to rely on the arbitration clause, even though it did not sign the Terms of Use itself.
Why This Decision Matters
For companies facing TCPA claims, this ruling is a meaningful development. It reinforces that marketing partners can enforce arbitration provisions when the underlying agreement clearly reflects their role. This opinion can now be used as a guide for any third-party marketing partner acquiring leads in their effort to enforce the website’s terms of use, even if the third party may not be specifically identified.
This is a testament to creative and good thinking by the attorneys at Greenspoon Marder involved in this case. Some attorneys may have looked at a website like this one and concluded that an effort by the marketing partner to enforce the arbitration agreement might not work, but our lawyers fought to ensure the rights of our clients were protected.