All telemarketing calls, except those manually dialed that do not contain a recorded message, are prohibited under the TCPA without the consumer's prior written consent. Penalties accumulate quickly: $500 for every robocall or unsolicited text message, $1,500 if the telemarketer "willfully or knowingly" initiates contact after the consumer opts out. So Davis sued. In late June, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts awarded Davis $30,000 but denied a motion for the treble damages. The two sides are now working on a settlement related to the $1,500-per-call claim. If negotiations fail, the case proceeds to trial. Rosalee Pagan, wherever and whoever you might be, could have sued, too, if collectors had called her cellphone instead of Davis' without written consent - even if she had, in fact, defaulted on a debt. DCI acquired the debt owed by Pagan, then paid another company for information about her, including phone numbers.
It wasn't such a good idea when Diversified Consultants Inc., a debt collection agency, started calling Jamie Davis of Cambridge, Mass., two years ago asking about an account belonging to someone named Rosalee Pagan. Davis, obviously, was not Pagan. He told Diversified Consultants collectors that he did know her, never heard of her and did not want to hear about her, or from DCI, again. Yet the calls continued. From Aug. 1 to Nov. 12, 2012, Davis received 60 calls on his cellphone from the company's collectors. That's illegal. A debt collector can call your home phone if there's an established business relationship. But after a update to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act last October, a telemarketer or debt collector must have written consent for autodialed or prerecorded calls (and text messages) to a cellphone.
One of those numbers belonged to Davis, which DCI called, repeatedly. Sergei Lemberg, a Stamford attorney who represents Davis. Davis, who declined to talk to The Bottom Line, had to demonstrate DCI used an automated telephone dialer to call his cellphone before he could collect damages. The court's ruling showed how DCI operated: It uploaded phone numbers every day to a LiveVox cloud-based server, which then called those numbers. When someone answered the call, LiveVox would transfer it to a DCI debt collector. The LiveVox system erased numbers daily, but it could store them for up to 30 days. A DCI vice president told the court the system could dial numbers sequentially, like a Automated Telephone Dialing System, or robocaller, but the company presented an affidavit retracting his testimony. This court didn't care. It considered a system that uploads numbers, then dials them and transfers answered calls to live collectors, also called a predictive dialer, sufficient evidence - though some courts disagree on what qualifies as automated dialing system.
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