2 Plaintiffs Allege Insurer Placed 52 Unwanted Calls to Their Cellphones
Plaintiffs Kimberly Hudson and Julius Bryant filed suit Thursday against healthcare insurance company SPI Holdings “to protect their privacy rights, namely the right to be left alone from unwanted telemarketing phone calls,” said their Telephone Consumer Protection Act complaint (docket…
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4:24-cv-00030) in U.S. District Court for Southern Texas in Houston. Hudson owns two cellphones for her private, residential use. She listed both her numbers on the national do not call registry at least as early as July 2003, said the complaint. Bryant listed his residential cellphone on the DNC registry in March 2019, it said. Yet SPI or someone acting on its behalf placed 52 telemarketing calls to Hudson and Bryant collectively, alleges their complaint. Without the benefit of discovery, the Arlington, Texas, residents “assume SPI directly placed the calls at issue,” it said. If SPI directly placed those calls, SPI is “directly liable for those calls,” it said. But if discovery reveals that some or all of the calls were made by third parties on SPI’s behalf, then SPI is still at least “vicariously liable for those calls,” it said. The FCC’s May 2013 declaratory ruling “rejected a narrow view of TCPA liability,” said the complaint. It includes the assertion that a seller’s liability “requires a finding of formal actual agency and immediate direction and control over third parties who place a telemarketing call,” it said. SPI’s third-party telemarketers “had actual and/or apparent authority to act” on SPI’s behalf, it said. “SPI also ratified its agents’ violations of the TCPA by accepting leads and deriving profit from sales imitated by unlawful telemarketing calls,” it said. SPI controlled or had the right to control the marketing activities of those acting on its behalf, it said. SPI isn’t permitted under the law “to outsource and contract its way out of liability by directing and benefitting from its agents’ TCPA violations,” it said.