SoulCycle, a national fitness company that offers indoor cycling and spinning workout classes, “engages in aggressive telephonic sales calls to consumers” to promote its goods and services with no regard for consumers’ rights under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, even after consumers ask the company to stop contacting them, alleged plaintiff Ian DiFalco’s class action Tuesday (docket 1:24-cv-03103) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan. DiFalco, a Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, resident, seeks injunctive relief to halt SoulCycle’s “illegal conduct,” which has resulted in the invasion of privacy, harassment, aggravation and disruption of the daily lives “of thousands of individuals,” said the complaint. DiFalco also seeks statutory damages on behalf of himself and members of the class, and any other available legal or equitable remedies, it said. SoulCycle in January began “bombarding” DiFalco with telemarketing text messages to his cellphone, it said. He responded “stop” to one of the text messages Jan. 26, but SoulCycle ignored the opt-out request and continued to bombard DiFalco with more unwanted telemarketing text messages, it said. Upon information and belief, SoulCycle doesn't have a written policy for maintaining an internal do not call list, as the TCPA requires, said the complaint. It also doesn’t inform and train its telemarketing personnel on the existence and the use of any internal do not call list, as the statute also requires, it said. To the extent that SoulCycle ever had any consent to contact DiFalco for marketing purposes, that consent was “expressly revoked” Jan. 26 when he responded to SoulCycle with the word “stop,” it said. The unwanted telemarketing text messages caused DiFalco “actual harm,” said the complaint. He estimates that he has wasted 15-30 seconds reviewing each of SoulCycle’s unwanted messages, it said. Each time, DiFalco had to stop what he was doing to either retrieve his phone or look down at the phone to review the message, it said. He also wasted 15 minutes locating and retaining counsel for this case in trying to stop SoulCycle’s unwanted solicitations, it said.
Plaintiff Heather Lee Minor and defendant Apollo Interactive agreed to the dismissal with prejudice of Minor’s individual Telephone Consumer Protection Act claims and without prejudice as to any other member of the putative class’s right to bring claims, said their joint stipulation of dismissal Tuesday (docket 4:23-cv-00355) in U.S. District Court for Northern Florida in Tallahassee. Each party will bear its own attorneys’ fees and costs, said the stipulation. Minor’s Aug. 10 class action alleged that Apollo, an advertising agency that provides lead generation services to businesses in the insurance industry, inundated U.S. consumers with unsolicited texts through a program called Apollo Alerts, to numbers listed on the national do not call registry (see 2308110002).
The hearing on the plaintiffs’ motion for final approval of a class-action settlement in a privacy case vs. Google has been rescheduled for Aug. 7, said a signed joint stipulation and order (docket 4:20-cv-03664) by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers for Northern California in Oakland. Google requested that the hearing take place a week later than the original July 30 date, and the plaintiffs didn't oppose, said the Tuesday order. Class-action plaintiffs Chasom Brown, William Byatt, Jeremy Davis, Christopher Castillo and Monique Trujillo alleged in their March 2 fourth amended complaint that Google engages in “surreptitious interception and collection” of personal and sensitive user data while users are in a private browsing mode, and does this without “disclosure or consent (see 2304140026).” The deadline for Google to file opposition to plaintiffs’ fee motion for an award of attorneys’ fees, costs and service awards is June 7, with plaintiffs’ reply in support of their fee motion slated for June 21, said the order.
Augusta National, owner of the Masters golf tournament, doesn’t disclose on its website that subscribers’ personally identifying information (PII) will be captured by the Meta Pixel tracking tool that Augusta installed on the website and then shared with Meta, alleged a class action Monday (docket 1:24-cv-03058) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan.
Defendant Liberty Mortgage’s violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act were “knowing and intentional,” and it didn’t “maintain procedures reasonably adapted to avoid any such violation,” alleged plaintiff Casey Lowe’s class action Monday (docket 2:24-cv-00496) in U.S. District Court for Eastern California in Sacramento. Liberty ignored Lowe’s opt-out demands and sent him at least five telemarketing text messages, said the complaint. The “cumulative effect” of unsolicited text messages like Liberty’s “poses a real risk of ultimately rendering the phone unusable for text messaging purposes as a result of the phone’s memory being taken up,” said the complaint.
Former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s motion to dismiss plaintiff Thomas Grant’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action (see 2404030047) is “wholly lacking in merit,” said Grant’s opposition Monday (docket 2:24-cv-00281) in U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio in Columbus. Grant’s TCPA complaint alleges Ramaswamy’s campaign, Vivek 2024, which was suspended Jan. 15, placed calls with the candidate's prerecorded voice. They were sent to consumers’ cellphones to promote the candidate’s telephonic town hall events. The calls were placed without obtaining consumers' prior express consent, the complaint alleges. Grant contends that a political candidate who doesn’t make calls, but whose official campaign instead makes them for him, may be held personally liable under the TCPA. Grant “sufficiently alleges” Ramaswamy’s liability for the prerecorded political campaign calls he received, said his opposition. As a result, Grant’s injuries from the calls “are traceable to Ramaswamy’s conduct,” it said. Grant sufficiently alleges that Ramaswamy “either personally placed the calls or, alternatively, was so heavily involved in the calls that he can either be deemed to have initiated them or is liable under control based and vicarious theories of liability,” it said. With regard to each theory, Grant alleges that Ramaswamy “determined to whom prerecorded calls would be sent, when they would be sent, and their content, and otherwise knew about and expressly authorized the transmission of the calls for his own personal benefit” as a candidate for president, “without consent, and despite complaints about them,” said the opposition. Grant’s allegations “are sufficient to put Ramaswamy on notice” of his claims, it said: “These are precisely the same types of allegations that have been deemed sufficient at the motion to dismiss stage to assert a TCPA claim against a political candidate arising from his campaign’s robocalls.” Ramaswamy’s robocalls aren’t “otherwise exempt from liability,” said the opposition. The exemptions Ramaswamy relies on “apply only to robocalls to landline numbers and not to robocalls to wireless numbers,” it said. His motion to dismiss should be denied “in total,” it said. Ramaswamy either expressly authorized making the prerecorded calls or knew that they were going to be made for his personal benefit, said the opposition. He did “nothing to stop them,” despite complaints from consumers about receiving them, it said. Ramaswamy also controlled the recipients of the calls by dictating that the messages were to be sent to voters registered as independents who had no prior relationship with him, said the opposition. Ramaswamy also controlled or had the right to control the messages' content, “as he is the candidate who ultimately stood to be elected” and personally recorded many of the messages transmitted to consumers as part of the prerecorded calls promoting his town hall meetings, it said.
Here are Communications Litigation Today's top stories from last week, in case you missed them. Each can be found by searching on its title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
GM and OnStar “surreptitiously” tracked plaintiff Colin Cogle’s driving behavior and location data and sold it to third parties, including LexisNexis, without his knowledge or consent, alleged Cogle's class action Monday (docket 2:24-cv-11062) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Michigan in Detroit.
StubHub’s suggestion that users can apply an “estimated fees filter” to search for tickets is an “intentionally misleading statement,” alleged a class action Monday (docket 2:24-cv-03318) in U.S. District Court for Central California in Los Angeles.
T-Mobile unlawfully uses biometric data and it benefits the company's bottom line, a class action Monday (docket 1:24-cv-03070) alleged in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan.