Your Partner's Customer Is Not Your Customer. What Miller v. S. Brown Says

What happened in Miller v. S. Brown & Associates#

S. Brown & Associates runs point-of-sale auto insurance programs for car dealerships. Dealers bind temporary National General coverage in its portal, and SBA gets each buyer's name, phone, vehicle and binder dates.

Rebecka Miller alleges she bought a GMC Terrain and the dealer placed temporary coverage through that program. Her complaint says her cell number had been on the Do Not Call Registry since 15 April 2025.

Between 20 and 28 November 2025, she alleges, texts arrived saying her temporary coverage ended 19 December, and that Direct Auto Insurance, an Allstate brand, could save her up to 25% on 6 or 12 months of coverage.

• She first sued Direct General, the company named in the texts. The court dismissed it on 8 June 2026: she had not pleaded direct liability, and her vicarious liability theories were conclusory.
• She then sued SBA. Judge Michelle Williams Court denied SBA's motion to dismiss in full on 22 September 2026 (No. 2:26-cv-01480, Dkt. 61, read 12 Oct 2026).

Why SBA argued the relationship was its own#

SBA's motion (Dkt. 52-1) built the defense from the regulation's own words. An EBR needs a purchase or transaction, with or without an exchange of consideration, inside 18 months.

SBA said the sale ran through its own infrastructure: the dealer portal, the enrollment forms and the binder records it keeps for every placement. Miller was still insured under its program on the day of every text.

SBA also argued the texts were the customer-contact step its program discloses, which promises that after a dealer uses it, the customer is contacted and offered continuous coverage.

How Judge Court ruled on the EBR defense#

Judge Court rejected the argument at the pleading stage. As alleged, Miller bought a car from a dealer, and the dealer placed the coverage. She never applied to SBA or contacted it.

The order holds that the complaint therefore does not plead a voluntary two-way communication based on Miller's purchase or transaction with SBA. Running the paperwork is not a relationship with the person.

The court leaned on Abboud v. Circle K Stores (D. Ariz., 27 Jan 2025): a company may have a relationship with a third person, but that encounter did not involve any purchase or application by the plaintiff herself.

The two windows the FCC rule allows#

The definition lives in 47 CFR 64.1200(f)(5), and 47 USC 227(a)(4) removes texts sent under it from the term telephone solicitation. No telephone solicitation means no Do Not Call claim.

The rule protects residential subscribers and runs on two clocks. Each needs a voluntary two-way communication between that subscriber and the entity doing the texting (eCFR text, read 12 Oct 2026).

How Miller's texts pointed back at SBA#

SBA also argued the complaint never said who provisioned the number, ran the platform or pressed send. Judge Court found Miller had pleaded more than a bare allegation anyway.

Her texts named her temporary NGIC coverage, the program SBA administers, timed to her binder's expiry. The complaint alleges only SBA and the dealer held that data, and that Direct Auto's counsel named SBA.

That plausibly alleged direct liability, so the court never reached vicarious liability. SBA disputes both points. Treble damages survived too, on an allegation SBA picked recipients from its own records.

• Every merge field you fill from partner data is a fingerprint. In Miller, a text quoting a coverage end date narrowed the possible senders to a handful of companies.
• SBA argued the complaint never said who provisioned the number or ran the platform. That argument did not win the motion.

Where B2B outbound runs into the same problem#

B2B teams rarely buy car insurance programs, but plenty run on partner data. Referral partners pass leads, resellers share customer lists, integration partners co-market and event sponsors swap badge scans.

Miller and Abboud point the same way for all of it. The person dealt with your partner. Unless they also bought from you or asked you something, expect the exemption not to travel with the spreadsheet.

Geography decides if the claim reaches you. Miller's court followed Ninth Circuit law, Satterfield and Howard v. RNC, to treat texts as calls under 227(c). TCPAWorld's 9 Oct 2026 map shows most other courts disagree.

• A founder's personal cell can count as a residential line in courts that still apply the FCC's 2003 presumption; the split is mapped at /blog/cell-phone-residential-subscriber-dnc-rulings.
• The text-versus-call split by circuit is at /blog/are-texts-calls-tcpa-dnc-map.

What the EBR exemption never covers#

The EBR answers one question: whether a message is a telephone solicitation under the Do Not Call rules. Other TCPA rules ask for consent instead.

The 47 CFR 64.1200(a)(2) bar on autodialed or prerecorded marketing to cell phones lists its exceptions, and an established business relationship is not one of them.

• A seller-specific do-not-call request ends the relationship, even if the customer keeps buying. Record it and honor it within a reasonable time, never more than 10 business days.
• An affiliate inherits nothing unless the subscriber would reasonably expect it, given its products and its identity.
• State telemarketing laws write their own exemptions. Texas and Florida are covered at /blog/is-imessage-marketing-legal.

Build partner campaigns that survive a Miller motion#

SBA's defense treated access to data as a relationship, and it lost at this stage. Fix the source of the contact before the first text, and keep the record that proves it.

• Tag every contact with how it reached you: own purchase, own inquiry, partner referral, purchased list. Store the date, so the 18-month and 3-month clocks can be computed, not guessed.
• Have the partner make the introduction under its own name, or get consent to hear from you on a form that names your company.
• Treat a partner list as cold until the person replies to you or buys from you. Scrub it against the Registry and your own suppression list before sending.
• Write merge fields knowing they can identify you. Reference only what the person told you, not what a partner's system knows about them.
• Put consent and Do Not Call terms in every co-marketing and referral agreement, and keep the partner's confirmation on file.

Where Blue Reacher sits in this#

Blue Reacher sends over iMessage, so no A2P registration is required. That is a carrier-registration fact, and it changes nothing about consent law or the Do Not Call rules.

We are a vendor in this category. Nothing here is legal advice, and every citation is dated so your counsel can check it.

• Pacing is published: no total daily message cap, replies are never metered, and new conversations pace at 50 opted-in or 30 cold new contacts per line per day.
• The safe harbor paperwork that helps when one partner contact slips through is at /blog/dnc-safe-harbor-training-records.

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