Bahr v. Securico Life Insurance Company

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WO
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF ARIZONA
Jonathan Bahr,
Plaintiff,
v.
Securico Life Insurance Company,
Defendant.
No. CV-25-02721-PHX-DWL
ORDER
This is a putative class action arising under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act
(“TCPA”). (Doc. 9.) Plaintiff alleges that he is an Arizona resident; that Defendant is a
Texas-based “for-profit company that sells insurance, including funeral and burial
insurance”; that he registered his phone number on the National Do-Not-Call Registry in
November 2024; and that he thereafter received “at least four calls” that “were all placed
by or on behalf of [Defendant] as part of a coordinated funeral/final-expense insurance
telemarketing campaign.” (Id. ¶¶ 5, 6, 15, 17, 21, 23.) Plaintiff seeks to serve as the lead
plaintiff of a “National Do Not Call Registry Class” composed of “[a]ll persons within the
United States: (1) whose residential telephone numbers were on the National Do Not Call
Registry for at least 31 days; (2) but who received more than one telephone solicitation call
from Defendant or a third party acting on Defendant’s behalf; (3) within a 12-month period;
(4) within the four years prior to the filing of the Complaint.” (Id. ¶ 61.)
Now pending before the Court is Defendant’s motion under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) to
transfer venue to the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. (Doc.
Case 2:25-cv-02721-DWL Document 18 Filed 11/26/25 Page 1 of 6

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8.) The motion is fully briefed (Docs. 10, 15) and neither side requested oral argument.
For the reasons that follow, the motion is granted.
DISCUSSION
I. Legal Standard
Under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a), a district court “may transfer any civil action to any
other district or division where it might have been brought” if a transfer would promote
“the convenience of parties and witnesses [and] the interest of justice.” “Section 1404(a)
is intended to place discretion in the district court to adjudicate motions for transfer
according to an individualized, case-by-case consideration of convenience and fairness.”
Stewart Org., Inc. v. Ricoh Corp., 487 U.S. 22, 29 (1988) (cleaned up).
If the action could have originally been brought in the proposed transferee forum,
the Court must then “weigh multiple factors in its determination whether transfer is
appropriate in a particular case.” Jones v. GNC Franchising, Inc., 211 F.3d 495, 498 (9th
Cir. 2000). There are eight factors that courts frequently consider:
(1) plaintiffs’ choice of forum, (2) convenience of the parties, (3)
convenience of the witnesses, (4) ease of access to the evidence, (5)
familiarity of each forum with the applicable law, (6) feasibility of
consolidation with other claims, (7) any local interest in the controversy, and
(8) the relative court congestion and time of trial in each forum.
Vu v. Ortho-McNeil Pharm., Inc., 602 F. Supp. 2d 1151, 1156 (N.D. Cal. 2009). “This list
is non-exclusive, and courts may consider other factors, or only those factors which are
pertinent to the case at hand.” Kempton v. Life for Relief and Dev. Inc., 2019 WL 5188750,
*2 (D. Ariz. 2019). See also Jones, 211 F.3d at 498-99 (providing a similar list of factors
and noting “that the relevant public policy of the forum state” may be a relevant
consideration). “No single factor is dispositive, and a district court has broad discretion to
adjudicate motions for transfer on a case-by-case basis.” Tech. Credit Corp. v. N.J.
Christian Acad., Inc., 307 F. Supp. 3d 993, 1004 (N.D. Cal. 2018). “The burden of
establishing that an action should be transferred is on the moving party.” Cambridge Filter
Corp. v. Int’l Filter Co., 548 F. Supp. 1308, 1310 (D. Nev. 1982).
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II. Analysis
Defendant correctly notes (Doc. 8 at 3), and Plaintiff does not seem to dispute, that
this case could have originally been brought in the Western District of Texas. The outcome
thus turns on whether a transfer would promote the convenience of parties and witnesses
and the interests of justice.
In Pierucci v. Homes.com Inc., 2020 WL 5439534 (D. Ariz. 2020), this Court
addressed a similar request. There, an Arizona-based plaintiff filed a putative TCPA class
action in the District of Arizona and the defendant then moved to transfer the action under
§ 1404(a) to the judicial district where it was based (the Eastern District of Virginia). After
weighing the § 1404(a) factors, the Court concluded that the transfer request should be
granted.
More specifically, the Court concluded that the first § 1404(a) factor (plaintiff’s
choice of forum) was “entitled to some deference, but not the ‘substantial weight’ it would
be accorded in most cases” for the “simple” reason that the plaintiff “seeks to represent a
class” and “most of the operative facts . . . occurred in [the defendant’s home district], not
Arizona.” Id. at *4.
As for the next factor (convenience of parties), the Court concluded that it weighed
in favor of transfer:
Litigating this case in Virginia is obviously more convenient for [defendant].
It is headquartered there, and, as noted, many of the operative facts in this
case occurred in Virginia. Moreover, the Eastern District of Virginia will be
more able to compel the testimony of any former employee unwilling to
testify, an option likely unavailable in this district. On the other hand,
[plaintiff] would suffer only modest inconvenience if forced to litigate in
Virginia. It’s true that litigating this action in Virginia will be less convenient
to her than litigating in her home state. But the fact this is a class action
mitigates that concern. TCPA class actions are normally attorney driven and
require limited participation from the named plaintiff for their individual
claims or as class representatives. Additionally, potential class plaintiffs will
come from all over the country, which means that the convenience to
[plaintiff] is accorded less weight. Taken together, the relatively small
inconvenience to [plaintiff] is outweighed by the greater convenience that
will come from litigating in Virginia, including access to unwilling
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witnesses. Thus, this is not a case of merely shifting the inconvenience from
one party to another, but a shift that will promote the efficient resolution of
the entire action.
Id. at *5 (cleaned up).
As for the next factor (convenience of witnesses), the Court concluded that it
weighed in favor of transfer, albeit only slightly, because “the largest concentration of
witnesses” with knowledge of the challenged marketing operations resided there, whereas
the plaintiff “identifie[d] no Arizona witnesses other than herself.” Id.
As for the next factor (ease of access to evidence), the Court concluded that it was
neutral, mostly due to changes in “technology [that have] made it easier for documents to
be transferred to different locations.” Id. at *6 (citation omitted).
As for the next factor (familiarity of each forum with applicable law), the Court
concluded that it was neutral because the TCPA is a federal statute. Id.
As for the next factor (local interest in controversy), the Court concluded that it
favored transfer, explaining that “[t]he conflict here is between Arizona’s interest in
protecting its own citizen . . . and Virginia’s interest in holding a local alleged wrongdoer
. . . responsible. The crux of this case, as alleged, comes down to wrongdoing emanating
from Virginia and reaching nationwide. Although [plaintiff] felt the harm from the alleged
wrongdoing in Arizona, the class-wide nature of her allegations makes the real geographic
center of gravity in this case the place where the harm originated.” Id.
As for the final factor (relative court congestion), the Court concluded that it favored
transfer because the Eastern District of Virginia had a significantly lower average time to
disposition of a civil case than the District of Arizona. Id.1
In its motion to transfer, Defendant cites Pierucci and argues that, for essentially the
same reasons that transfer was warranted in that case, transfer is warranted here. (Doc. 8
at 4-8.) Defendant also provides a declaration from its CEO, who avows that all of
1 Although, as noted above, some courts also consider “feasibility of consolidation
with other claims,” that factor was not implicated or discussed in Pierucci.
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Defendant’s employees are located in the Western District of Texas and that Defendant
does not own or operate any offices or have any employees in Arizona. (Doc. 8-1 ¶¶ 9,
11.) In response, Plaintiff does not cite—much less attempt to distinguish—Pierucci but
advances various reasons why the transfer request should be denied, including that
Defendant is alleged to “distribute[] its policies through a network of appointed producers
licensed in Arizona,” that Defendant’s “corporate witnesses are employees whose
testimony can be obtained remotely,” that he will be inconvenienced by litigation in Texas,
and that other courts have sometimes denied transfer requests in TCPA cases. (Doc. 10.)
In reply, Defendant begins: “Plaintiff conspicuously downplays that his TCPA lawsuit is
an attorney-driven proposed class action in which he seeks to represent a nationwide class.
The reason for Plaintiff’s omission should be evident. The law is clear that the general
presumption that favors a plaintiff’s choice of forum falls away in the context of a proposed
class action.” (Doc. 15 at 1.) Defendant also contends that “Plaintiff’s convenience
analysis focuses only on himself . . . [b]ut focusing solely on a plaintiff’s inconvenience is
not how courts examine the convenience factors.” (Id. at 3-4.)
The Court has carefully considered the parties’ arguments and sees no reason why
the outcome should be different here than it was in Pierucci. Plaintiff’s choice of forum is
not entitled to the same weight it would ordinarily trigger in the § 1404(a) analysis, due to
this being a class action, and several other factors favor transfer for essentially the same
reasons as in Pierucci. See also Neff v. Towbin Dodge LLC, 2020 WL 6802188 (E.D. Cal.
2020) (granting § 1404(a) transfer request in TCPA class action for similar reasons);
Shelton v. Freedom Forever, LLC, 2025 WL 693249 (E.D. Pa. 2025) (same).
…
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Accordingly,
IT IS ORDERED that:
1. Defendant’s motion to transfer (Doc. 8) is granted.
2. The Clerk shall transfer this action to the United States District Court for the
Western District of Texas, Austin Division.
Dated this 26th day of November, 2025.
Case 2:25-cv-02721-DWL Document 18 Filed 11/26/25 Page 6 of 6