NASCAR Sprint Text Ad Class Action Lawsuit

NASCAR Sprint Text Ad Class Action Lawsuit

By Sarah Pierce

NASCAR has been hit with a class action lawsuit that claims a text message promoting coverage of the 2011 Daytona 500 sent to Sprint phones violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

The NASCAR class action lawsuit alleges it sent an unsolicited text that said: “FREE NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile lets you watch the action from Daytona live on your phone. Download now. Reply END to stop.”

According to the class action lawsuit, the text message was placed from an automatic telephone dialing system, which violates the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Recipients who replied “Stop” to remove themselves from the list received a follow-up text notifying them that they have been removed, which is also illegal, the TCPA lawsuit states.

“[NASCAR] illegally contacted plaintiff and [others] via their cellular telephones by using an unsolicited and/or confirmatory text message, thereby causing [them] to incur certain cellular telephone charges or reduce cellular telephone time for which [they] previously paid and invading the privacy of [them],” the NASCAR text class action lawsuit states.

The NASCAR Sprint text class action lawsuit is seeking $1,500 for each violation of the TCPA. It does not specify how many alleged TCPA violations took place, but estimates the damages would be greater than $5 million, which is the threshold for federal court jurisdiction in such a case.

Class action lawsuit settlements concerning TCPA violations usually garner huge awards for Class Members. A class action settlement over unsolicited texts advertising the Robots DVD release, for example, garnered $200 for Class Members. Class Members who received unsolicited text advertisement from Burger King received $250 from a similar class action settlement.

We’ll keep you posted if the NASCAR Sprint text message class action lawsuit also reaches a settlement.