Federal Court Denies Class Certification in “Wrong Number” Case

In Wilson v. Badcock Home Furniture, the plaintiff alleged that Badcock had called her approximately 30 times to attempt to collect on her delinquent account, even though she had told the phone representatives to stop calling her. Wilson sought to represent over 7,000 other call recipients that she alleged Badcock had called using an ATDS without consent. The court denied class certification, holding that, "Rather than engage in random robocalling, Defendant only calls numbers in its records and its intent was to call actual known customers in arrears…Actual customers almost certainly consented.  This means Defendant would likely have a possible defense against many class members, the precise contours of which could vary substantially.  The scope of this sort of inquiry is likely to dwarf the much simpler question of whether Defendant called a given class member with a prohibited system.  This is not a case where a defendant sprayed robocalls across a nonconsenting public." This is a good example of how only calling numbers with prior consent can protect your company from facing a dangerous class action. Read the court’s full opinion here. Find a TCPA Defense Lawyer, a telemarketing compliance attorney, and an expert in robocall laws, telemarketing rules, the definition of ATDS, and all other telemarketing compliance related issues.

Court Awards Over $20 Million in Attorneys Fees in Dish Network TCPA Case

As you may recall, Dish Networks paid a hefty price of $280 million to the FTC last year for alleged violations of the TCPA. This month, the Court awarded the plaintiffs attorneys over $20 Million for their work on private cases against Dish for similar alleged do-not-call violations. This should be a clear reminder to telemarketing businesses that there are both plaintiffs and attorneys who are looking to make a nice sum of money from your compliance mistakes.  Protect yourself by ensuring your practices are compliant with all state and federal telemarketing regulations. Call a telemarketing defense attorney if you find yourself facing a telemarketing lawsuit filed over issues related to do-not-call laws, cell phone telemarketing regulations, business to business telemarketing compliance, etc.

California Ends Plan to Tax Text Messages 

The State of California has backed away from a proposed cell phone texting tax that was designed to generate funds for 911 services and phone plans for lower income residents. A Tweet sent out by the California Public Utilities Commission explained the decision: "On December, 12, 2018, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a declaratory ruling finding that 'text messaging' is an information service, not a telecommunications service, under the Federal Telecommunications Act, which limits state authority over information services. Prior to this FCC ruling, text messaging was not a classified service under federal law. Under California law, telecommunications services are subject to the collection of surcharges to support a number of CPUC public programs that subsidize the cost of service for rural Californians and for low income, disadvantaged communities, and provides special services for the deaf, the hard of hearing, and the disabled. In light of the FCC's action, assigned Commissioner Carla J. Peterman has withdrawn from the CPUC's Jan. 10, 2019 Voting Meeting agenda the draft decision in Docket R. 17-06-023, which proposed to clarify that text messaging service should be subject to the statutory surcharge requirement." Learn about telemarketing to cell phones, autodialer laws, and avatar telemarketing laws.
Consider having a TCPA lawyer perform a telemarketing compliance audit of your business if any of theses stories concern you.