Medical Alert Firm’s Telemarketing Calls Violated TCPA, Alleges Class Action
LiveFree Emergency Response, which sells mobile medical alert systems, placed telemarketing calls to Garrett Traylor and his putative class members using a prerecorded voice, despite not having received prior express written consent to place those calls, alleged Traylor’s Telephone Consumer…
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Protection Act class action Friday (docket 1:24-cv-10329) in U.S. District Court for Massachusetts in Boston. Traylor listed his landline phone number on the national do not call registry in August 2003, yet he received multiple calls pitching him on LiveFree’s Life Beacon device and $39.99 monthly monitoring services, said his complaint. On all the calls, LiveFree spoofed its phone number to make the incoming call appear as though it originated from the plaintiff’s same 617 area code “so that Traylor would be more likely to answer the phone,” it said. Not only did LiveFree “incessantly place telemarketing calls to Traylor,” it did so after he repeatedly asked the company in writing to stop calling him, it said. The calls that LiveFree placed to the Westwood, Massachusetts, resident and his putative class members were “harassing, irritating, invasive and annoying,” said his complaint. “Where LiveFree is the only party that disclosed its identity” in calls that Traylor answered, he alleges the company is “directly liable” for those unlawful calls, it said. But if discovery reveals that some or all of the calls were made by third parties on LiveFree’s behalf, then it's vicariously liable for those calls, the complaint said. LiveFree 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.