Courts And Arbitration
Fourth Circuit sends Sessoms's robocall suit to arbitration
The court reversed an Eastern District of North Carolina ruling and said the arbitration clause Sessoms accepted with NextGen Leads can also be enforced by USHealth Advisors.
That leaves the Telephone Consumer Protection Act claim unresolved on the merits. The panel said the company could invoke the clause under third-party-beneficiary rules and that the district court should enter an arbitration order.
- The Fourth Circuit said USHealth Advisors can invoke arbitration.
- Sessoms’s TCPA suit was filed as a putative class action.
- The panel sent the case back to the Eastern District of North Carolina.
- The ruling does not resolve the merits of the robocall claim.
For consumers trying to challenge unwanted calls, the practical effect is that the case does not end at the courthouse door. A published Fourth Circuit panel reversed the Eastern District of North Carolina and sent Cynthia Sessoms’s lawsuit against USHealth Advisors, LLC, back for an order compelling arbitration. Sessoms says the company violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or TCPA, in a suit she brought individually and on behalf of others similarly situated.
The panel said the dispute belongs in arbitration rather than court, which changes where the fight will be heard even as it leaves the underlying robocall claim unresolved.
The clause that reached beyond one company
The court’s ruling turned on an online agreement Sessoms accepted with NextGen Leads, the lead-generation company behind the website she used to request health-insurance quotes. USHealth argued that the arbitration language in that agreement covered claims tied to the calls she received. The panel agreed that USHealth could enforce the clause as a third-party beneficiary under Delaware law.
That means the class case moves out of ordinary civil litigation for now. The panel reversed the district court’s refusal to send the case to arbitration and remanded it to the Eastern District of North Carolina. The opinion was issued May 21, 2026, by Judge King, joined by Judge Wynn and Judge Thacker.
What stays open
The ruling does not decide whether the calls Sessoms describes were unlawful. It decides where that dispute will be resolved. For companies that rely on online sign-up forms and arbitration language, the case shows how those clauses can still reach consumers who never signed directly with the business named in the lawsuit.