Jason Tompkins

Jason Tompkins serves as Chair of Balch’s Issues & Appeals Practice and has extensive experience handling appeals in federal and state appellate courts, including serving as counsel in the United States Supreme Court. His appellate experience spans nearly every category, including consumer finance, energy, environmental, and administrative law.

Much of Jason’s practice focuses on class action defense, particularly in the area of consumer finance litigation. Jason has been lead counsel on more than 60 class actions and hundreds of individual cases involving claims under the FDCPA, FCRA, and TCPA. He acts as regional and national counsel for several financial services clients who trust him to coordinate defense strategy across numerous jurisdictions—both at the trial and appellate levels. He served for three years as Co-Chair of the ABA’s Consumer Litigation Committee.

Select Matters:

• Nationwide defense of bankruptcy-related FDCPA claims: Lead national counsel for debt buyers in more than 200 matters, including nine class actions, involving FDCPA claims based on proofs of claim filed in Chapter 13 bankruptcy cases. Argued issues of first impression in multiple courts, creating circuit split that culminated in a favorable decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. (Midland Funding, LLC v. Johnson, 137 S.Ct. 1407(2017)); Nelson v. Midland Credit Management, Inc., 828 F.3d 749 (8th Cir. 2016), petition for cert. filed, No. 16-757 (U.S. Dec. 12, 2016); Torres v. Asset Acceptance, LLC, 96 F. Supp. 3d 541 (E.D. Pa. 2015), appeal docketed, No. 15-2132 (3d Cir. May 13, 2015); Ash v. Midland Credit Management, Inc., No. 15-90071 (Bankr. M.D. Tenn. Jan. 5, 2016, appeal docketed, (B.A.P. 6th Cir. Jan. 25, 2016))
• Challenge to FERC license: Successfully moved, as intervenor, for dismissal of appellate challenge to FERC hydroelectric license on basis that petitioners failed to properly invoke jurisdiction of court of appeals under the Federal Power Act (Smith Lake Improvement & Stakeholders Ass’n v. Fed. Energy Regulatory Comm’n, 809 F.3d 55. (D.C. Cir. 2015))
• Class action based on dam operation:  Obtained summary judgment, which was affirmed on appeal, on basis that class action alleging that operation of a dam violated lakefront property owners’ riparian rights was improper collateral attack on hydroelectric license, and therefore outside the courts’ jurisdiction (Otwell v. Alabama Power Co., 944 F. Supp. 2d 1134 (N.D. Ala. 2013), aff’d, 747 F.3d 1275. (11th Cir. Apr. 1, 2014))
• Medicare Act preemption:  Successfully argued for the Alabama Supreme Court to grant a mandamus petition presenting the issue of whether a healthcare provider may file class action under state tort law claiming that the insurer wrongfully failed to provide coverage and payment for Medicare-covered services (In Ex parte Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Ala., 90 So. 3d 158. (Ala. 2012))