TMCnews Featured Article

Telemarketing is a tough business and telemarketers are using every avenue to get the message across. From telephones to Internet and faxes, they are tapping all the communication mediums to promote their products and services. While unsolicited faxes may not bother some, it may be imposing unwanted burdens on the others in terms of cost of paper and ink, as well as making fax machines unavailable for legitimate work.

 In order to check abusive telemarketing, including prevention of the transmission of junk faxes, Congress has enacted the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Despite such acts, some businesses continue to abuse telemarketing by sending unsolicited faxes.

Recently, a small business loan provider Liberty Capital Group Inc. violated the TCPA act. As a result, it was hit with a proposed class action suit, accusing it of violating the TCPA act by sending unsolicited faxes to businesses around the U.S.

According to Law360 report, this lawsuit was filed in California federal court by heating and cooling system contractor Bedard Controls Inc. The company is seeking up to $1,500 in damages for each fax allegedly sent by Liberty Capital in violation of the TCPA. That translates into more than $5 million for potentially tens of thousands of class members.

According to the complaint, which was filed in February 2012, Liberty Capital allegedly sent an unsolicited advertisement to Bedard Controls’ fax machine. In a statement, the complaint said, “Plaintiff never provided prior express permission to send advertisements to plaintiff’s telephone facsimile machine. Plaintiff had no established business relationship with defendant at the time the unsolicited advertisement was sent.”

Further commenting on the TCPA act, the complaint said that the act forbids the use of any telephone fax machine, computer or any such device to send an unsolicited advertisement to a telephone facsimile machine, unless there is an established business relationship. “Defendant is engaged in an organized program of routinely sending unsolicited facsimile transmissions to tens of thousands of persons and entities throughout the nation with whom defendant had no established business relationship.”

Bedard Controls said that without the class action, Liberty Capital would probably continue sending the allegedly illegal faxes, and could not be induced to comply with the TCPA in the absence of class-wide damages.