Chicago Business Litigation Lawyer Blog
Advances in technology have done many wonderful things for us, but they have also made life more frustrating in some ways. For example, using automated dialing equipment, companies can now call or text many people at once at very little expense. Unfortunately, this is not only annoying for customers, it can also get expensive for some consumers and wastes time dealing with junk, unwanted messages and calls.
Before cell phones, the person or company making the call would be the one to pay for it. With the invention of cell phones though, telephone companies started charging customers for the calls they received. The result was that some customers were paying for calls they did not want to receive and were also having to waste time dealing with them. To remedy this invasion of privacy, legislators introduced the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which makes it illegal to contact someone on their cell phone in a non-emergency situation without the person’s express permission to do so. Despite this law, companies continue to use automated dialing systems to reach customers with unwanted calls and text messages.
According to a recent class action lawsuit, the San Diego Chargers NFL franchise allegedly violated the TCPA by allegedly using automated dialing systems to make unsolicited calls to sell tickets to customers. The lawsuit was filed by Paul Story who alleges he received unsolicited phone calls on his cell phone from a phone number that was associated with websites operated by the Chargers Football Company, LLC. Story alleges he never provided any signed authorization to anyone that permitted the football company to contact him on his cell phone for non-emergency purposes. Continue reading ›