Dish Network Do Not Call Lawsuit Reaps $270M Award

A United States District Judge has ordered a large direct broadcast satellite provider to pay $270 million in a Dish Network Do Not Call lawsuit.

Dish Network, one of the United States’ largest direct broadcast satellite provider, has been ordered to pay nearly $170 million in civil penalties to the United States government and over $100 million in statutory damages to four states for violating different aspects of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

These four states include California, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio. In a 475-page opinion, the judge stated that Dish Network violated the Federal Trade Commission’s Telephone Sales Rule and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), as well as various state statutes.

In this Dish Network Do Not Call lawsuit, the company was accused of making sales calls to people who, by law, should not have received sales calls. Their numbers, the Dish Network Do Not Call lawsuit states, were listed on the national Do Not Call Registry. Many numbers also belonged to individuals who said they did not want to be contacted by Dish.

In addition, this Dish Network Do Not Call lawsuit accuses Dish Network of abandoning calls, using prerecorded messages on their calls and helping other entities do the same things. All of these actions, this Dish Network Do Not Call lawsuit claims, violate some aspect of the TCPA or Federal Trade Commission rules.

Dish Network has been ordered to pay this $270 million to rectify these allegations and will also have to undergo monitoring for compliance.

The judge opined, “The plaintiffs have established that Dish, its telemarketing vendors, and its order entry retailers violated the applicable do­ not­ call laws millions and millions of times.”

Not only is Dish Network accused of making these illegal phone calls, but their vendors and retailers also allegedly made these calls as well. The company claims that they have no way of getting information on these calls because they were made by a third party.

A Dish Network spokesperson told Law360, “The penalties awarded in this case radically and unjustly exceed, by orders of magnitude, those found in the settlements in similar actions… The court is holding Dish responsible for telemarketing activities conducted by independent third­ parties, including in circumstances where such third­ parties intentionally hid their telemarketing efforts from Dish.”

A $61 million damage award in a different Dish Network TCPA lawsuit was ordered earlier this year. Dish believes that the outcome of this case should not have bearing on the current Dish Network Do Not Call lawsuit.

The Dish Network Do Not Call Lawsuit is U.S. et al. v. Dish Network LLC, Case No. 3:09­cv­03073, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois.

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