Class Action Seeks to Halt Inundation of Tax Preparer’s Telemarketing Calls

Priority Concepts inundated plaintiff James Shelton with at least 20 unwanted calls between Nov. 15 and Dec. 21 in an attempt to sell him employee retention credit tax preparation services and “anticipation loans,” alleged Shelton’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action Friday (docket 2:24-cv-02581) in U.S. District Court for Eastern New York in Central Islip. At no point did Shelton consent to receiving telemarketing calls from Priority before receiving the automated calls at issue, said the complaint. The Pennsylvania resident put his phone number on the national do not call registry in 2015, more than eight years before he began receiving the calls at issue, it said. The plaintiff has never been a Priority customer, and he “explicitly requested that the calls from Priority stop on multiple occasions,” including via a Dec. 8 email to the company, and on a phone call he received that same day, it said. The calls were unwanted, “nonconsensual encounters,” said the complaint. Shelton and the class have been harmed by Priority’s acts “because their privacy has been violated and they were annoyed and harassed,” it said. The calls also occupied their phone lines, storage space and bandwidth, “rendering them unavailable for legitimate communication, including while driving, working, and performing other critical tasks,” it said.