In a case that started making the rounds at the end of last week, a consumer finance company is facing a Telephone Consumer Protection Act lawsuit after allegedly placing more than 2,300 calls to phone numbers managed by an app used to block robocalls, many of which may have been collection calls.
The class-action complaint, filed on June 12 in federal court in Connecticut, was brought by Nomorobo, a service designed to protect consumers from robocalls. The company claims to maintain nearly 300,000 phone numbers and made them available to its honeypot system, which detects and logs calls from telemarketers and robocallers, according to the complaint. More than 99% of the calls being made to those numbers are unwanted robocalls, the company said in its complaint. The plaintiff claims the defendant placed 2,368 calls to those numbers using a pre-recorded or artificial voice without consent.
Nomorobo claims to have standing to file its lawsuit because every call it receives imposes a direct cost on the company. The company claims to spend as much as $1 million per year maintaining its honeypot.
The defendant’s calls used artificial or prerecorded voices and most followed the same script, according to the complaint. The defendant identified itself in about half of the alleged calls; for the other half, Nomorobo allegedly called them on its own and claimed that the numbers identified themselves as belonging to the defendant.
The complaint accuses the defendant of violating Section 227(b)(1)(A) of the TCPA by using an artificial or prerecorded voice on calls without the plaintiff’s consent.
The lawsuit seeks statutory damages of up to $1,500 per call for knowing or willful violations, potentially totaling over $3 million.
