A plaintiff’s attorney who has represented many individuals in cases against companies in the credit and collection industry has filed a lawsuit of his own, alleging a financial institution violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by sending unsolicited text messages via an automated telephone dialing system to a prepaid cell phone he uses to “make anonymous telephone calls to scam operators” when investigating claims of his clients.
A copy of the complaint in the case of Rogers v. Fifth Third Bank can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff obtained a prepaid cell phone that was activated last August. Less than a day after the phone was activated, the plaintiff started receiving text messages from the defendant. During the next four months, the plantiff received 304 text messages from the defendant. The “sheer number and frequency” of the messages “strongly indicates” that the defendant used an ATDS and it is “extremely unlikely” that a human intervened in the process, the plaintiff alleged in his complaint.
The plaintiff is claiming that the defendant willfully and knowingly violated the TCPA, which would result in a fine of $1,500 per violation, if proved to be true. The plaintiff attached a log of the text messages received to the phone and they appear to be updates for a bank account managed by the defendant. The text messages include updates about withdrawals, available balance, and purchases paid for from funds in the account. Each message included “Text STOP to quit, HELP for info.”
Since the phone was a prepaid account, the plaintiff was “required to expend a portion of [his] prepaid minutes to view the content of the text message.”
