Honda called car owners to warn about dangerous Takata airbags. Its reward was to get sued by a class action lawyer over unsolicited calls under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) [U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform]
Honda called car owners to warn about dangerous Takata airbags. Its reward was to get sued by a class action lawyer over unsolicited calls under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) [U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform]
9 Comments
The courts should use equity to trump (no pun intended) the law, and dismiss the class action outright. The intent of the law was to put an end to unsolicited sales pitches, not safety-related calls.
I suspect the same litigants would have been the first to sue if their airbag malfunctioned.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Captnhal, why do you propose these litigants would have waited for their airbags to malfunction? Strongly suspect they are part of the group suing for diminished value due to the possibility their airbags might malfunction (and other theories besides) – everything other than an actual airbag malfunction, pretty much.
It should come as no surprise that plaintiff’s firm is Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro.
(According to the LA Times) Article
I did a quick search of the HBSS web site, a copy of the complaint and/or link to their splash page about the lawsuit isn’t listed there (yet?).
Mr. Berman and the Hagens Berman firm are the subject of occasional mentions here at Overlawyered, and get a mention over at CEI’s Center for Class Action Fairness as well.
I believe the TCPA has an exception – such calls are permitted if there is a pre-existing business relationship between the caller and the receiver. Wouldn’t that apply here?
I thought that companies that you have an established business relationship with are allowed to call you… Owning one of their products is pretty much a business relationship given the expense, subject to recall, etc nature of the device owned.
Except that is subject to The Lawyer’s Veto. The Lawyer’s Veto is a lot like The Heckler’s Veto, except whereas a Heckler usually can be expected to keep talking, no matter what, with The Lawyer’s Veto, you can pay that person enough to STFU.
“No good deed goes unpunished.”
The “prior business relationship” exemption was done away with by the FCC, effective October, 2013 in favor of an “unambiguous written consent rule”. In theory, purely informational calls, and calls for non-commercial purposes are exempted from the TCPA. I’m curious as to how HBSS pled their way around it. I have some thoughts from past litigation, but not being a lawyer, or a specialist in this area (my expertise comes solely from having to look it up and explain it to my boss, who then repackaged my work, and explained it to their boss – incorrectly, I suspect…)
If you feel like reading, start here:
Cornell US Code page as well as the FCC’s Orders and Notice on the subject. The FCC, sadly, doesn’t have a convenient summary of their rules making on the subject – that would be useful.