California Appellate Court Upholds Spam Text Lawsuit

California Appellate Court Upholds Crunch Gym Spam Text Lawsuit

The Ninth Circuit court of appeal revived a proposed class action lawsuit that accused the Crunch gym chain of spamming members’ cellphones with promotional text messages. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) prohibits the sending of marketing texts if the sender has not first obtained the consent of recipients to receive the texts. Violations of this federal statute expose the sender of the text to liability of $500 to $1,500 per text. And because companies often send out thousands of the spam texts, the financial exposure to TCPA lawsuits can be enormous.

Importantly, in order for the TCPA to apply, the spam texts must have been sent by an autodialer. The trial-court judge in the case against Crunch granted summary judgment in favor of the gym after finding that gym chain’s communication system was not an autodialer because it lacked a random or sequential number generator and didn’t have the ability to add that feature. But a recent District of Columbia court decision discussed an expanded definition of an autodialer under the TCPA. The appellate court in the Crunch case seized upon the D.C. court decision and reversed the Crunch trial court decision, thereby allowing the case against Crunch to proceed. Jthe D.C. court found that the FCC’s ambiguous description of an autodialer included equipment that made automatic calls from lists of recipients.

The lawsuit against Crunch seeks to hold the gym chain liable for unsolicited promotional text messages sent from November 2012 to October 2013. The 9th Circuit appellate court found that the TCPA defined an autodialer as equipment that has the capacity “to store numbers to be called or to produce numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator — and to dial such numbers.”

Do You Have a Claim against Crunch gym for spam texts?

If your cell phone has been ringing with unwanted marketing calls from Crunch or other entities, you may have rights that require your legal attention.

Contact a Robocall Attorney Today

Contact an experienced robocall attorney at Dimond Kaplan & Rothstein, P.A. today for a free consultation to discuss your rights and potential legal claims.