Violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) are subject to a judgment of anywhere from $400 per call to $1,200 per call, depending on whether the court deems the defendant to have been deliberately willful in its violation of consumers’ privacy.
The TCPA was enacted shortly after cell phones became prominent in the market and cell phone users were charged for the calls they received, as well as those they made. To protect consumers from having to pay for promotional calls they didn’t want to receive on their cell phones, legislators came up with the TCPA, which makes it illegal for companies to call consumers on their cell phone in a non-emergency situation, unless the company has received the consumers’ express permission to do so.
According to U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Eagles, Dish Network LLC earned the highest judgment for the promotional calls they had made to consumers using Satellite Systems Network and allegedly failing to properly regulate the calls that company made on Dish’s behalf.
The lawsuit was filed in 2014 by Thomas Krakauer, who claimed he received multiple calls from SSN on Dish’s behalf from 2009 to 2011, despite being on the National Do-Not-Call Registry. Since he filed is class action against those two companies, the North Carolina federal court has certified two more class actions with similar claims of having received telemarketing calls from Dish or SSN between 2010 and 2011.
In Krakauer’s case, the jury found that SSN had placed more than 51,000 promotional phone calls in violation of the TCPA in the relevant time period and awarded damages to the plaintiffs of $400 for each phone call, bringing the total to about $20.5 million.
But Judge Eagles found that treble damages were warranted, since Dish had willfully violated the TCPA by failing to oversee SSN’s telemarketing practices, despite having promised regulators it would do so. Judge Eagles therefore raised the damages to $1,200 per illegal phone call for a total of $61 million.
Outraged, Dish denied the judge’s assertion that such a large increase in damages was warranted, claiming its rights to due process had been violated and that the damages were excessive.
To support its claim, Dish referred to a lawsuit in Illinois that had been filed by the federal government, as well as several states, and that included some of the same phone calls contained the lawsuit filed by Krakauer.
Judge Eagles rejected their argument, pointing out they had known about the Illinois lawsuit for the three years it had been involved in Krakauer’s allegations against it in the court, and it knew some of the same phone calls were involved. But still Dish had never claimed there were any similarities between the two actions until the damages against Dish had been increased.
Instead, Eagles stood by her decision to treble the damages, saying it reflected how reprehensible Dish’s actions had been in knowingly and repeatedly violating the privacy of thousands of consumers whose numbers were listed on the National Do-Not-Call Registry.
Our Aurora, Illinois consumer rights private law firm handles individual and class action gift card, data breach, privacy rights, deceptive advertising, predatory lending, unfair debt collection, lemon law, and other consumer fraud cases that government agencies and public interest law firms such as the Illinois Attorney General may not pursue. Class action lawsuits our law firm has been involved in or spear-headed have led to substantial awards totaling over a million dollars to organizations including the National Association of Consumer Advocates, the National Consumer Law Center, and local law school consumer programs. The Chicago consumer lawyers at Lubin Austermuehle are proud of our achievements in assisting national and local consumer rights organizations to obtain the funds needed to ensure that consumers are protected and informed of their rights. By standing up to consumer fraud and consumer rip-offs, and in the right case filing consumer protection lawsuits and class-actions you too can help ensure that other consumers’ rights are protected from consumer rip-offs and unscrupulous or dishonest practices.
Our Dekalb and Park Ridge consumer attorneys provide assistance in data breach, privacy violation, fair debt collection, consumer fraud and consumer rights cases including in Illinois and throughout the country. You can click here to see a description of the some of the many individual and class-action consumer cases our Chicago consumer lawyers have handled. A video of our lawsuit which helped ensure more fan friendly security at Wrigley Field can be found here. You can contact one of our Skokie and Evanston consumer protection, gift card and data breach attorneys who can assist in consumer fraud, consumer rip-off, lemon law, unfair debt collection, predatory lending, wage claims, unpaid overtime and other consumer, or consumer class action cases by filling out the contact form at the side of this blog or by clicking here. You can also call our toll-free number at 630-333-0333.