John Peterson

NASHVILLE - John Peterson hasn't had an office in California since 2007, but he still regularly litigates cases here and elsewhere that involve California law and clients.

Now the managing partner for Polsinelli's Nashville office, he negotiated a settlement last summer of a national class action in San Jose alleging hundreds of thousands of violations of the federal Telephone Consumer Privacy Act. Potential damages were hundreds of millions of dollars.

"We ended up resolving it for all defendants for a total of $1.6 million," he said.

Peterson represents First Data and its parent Fiserv, Inc. in litigation across the country. The companies are among the largest credit card processing companies in the world.

The case dealt with unsolicited auto-dialer calls and texts to businesses that promoted merchant card processing services from First Data and Sam's Club. Although thousands of calls were made, records of them were not readily available. "Our client was not the one who made the calls," Peterson said. Floyd v. First Data Merchant Services LLC, 5:20-cv-02162 (N.D. Cal., filed March 30, 2020).

He represented Fiserv and First Data, along with Wells Fargo, in a somewhat similar class action alleging violations of the California Invasion of Privacy Act. In that case, filed in Chicago, a separate company had called businesses to arrange appointments regarding credit card processing without realizing the act required giving notice that the calls were recorded. Wang v. Wells Fargo Bank, 1:16-cv- 11223 (N.D. Ill., filed Dec. 9, 2016).

The act is unusual in providing a private right of action and setting statutory fines of $5,000 per violation. "The victim does not even have to demonstrate that they were harmed in any way," Peterson said.

The case presented some unusual issues, including that Wells Fargo had previously settled an unrelated privacy-act case with the state attorney general's office. The consent agreement in that case included "a statement that it would have a res judicata effect against any and all other claims related to this statute," he said.

Further, the plaintiffs admitted that none of the people who were recorded suffered any actual damages. Peterson's clients settled the litigation favorably in August for $28 million, he said.

In a very different sort of case, he is part of the team representing Barry Tarlow's sister and brother in a probate dispute with the former executor of the late criminal defense attorney's estate.

Interestingly, the sister was at one time an in-house attorney with First Data and brought the company and Peterson together.