Wells Fargo and Cayan LLC have opted to settle a TCPA lawsuit, dodging a proposed class action over junk faxes and the alleged violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
Plaintiff Heather M., a podiatrist, had filed this Wells Fargo TCPA lawsuit in December 2015. She alleged Capital Bankcard, on behalf of Wells Fargo, sent an unsolicited and unwanted 4-page fax, advertising payment processing services, without her prior express written consent or a previously established business relationship.
Cayan LLC., founded in 1998, is a merchant account provider headquartered in Boston, Mass. Formerly known as Merchant Warehouse, it enables outside sales agents to resell its products under the brand name “Capital Bankcard.” It currently has over 30,000 merchants and $7 billion per year in payments processed.
According to the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, the TCPA requires telemarketers to receive prior express written consent from consumers before making unsolicited electronic communications using certain types of automated equipment. These prohibitions are usually invoked to punished unsolicited autodialed phone calls, but they also apply to the sending of unsolicited faxes.
Moreover, the FCC no longer allows telemarketers to hide behind statements claiming that they have an established business relationship. These businesses must allow consumers an “opt-out” method to get the consumer’s phone number off their call list.
In the Wells Fargo TCPA lawsuit, the defendants agreed to the injunction to pay $7,500 to the plaintiff who had filed the alleged claim.
The Wells Fargo TCPA lawsuit sought class status but did not “specify a class definition,” court records stated. And shortly after the plaintiff had filed suit, Wells Fargo and Cayan LLC. offered the $7,500 settlement.
The court denied the defendants’ motion for dismissal in March, finding that Heather had standing to bring her TCPA claims.
The settlement bars the defendants from sending future unsolicited faxes to consumers. Nonetheless, other members of the proposed Class can still file their own TCPA lawsuits seeking damages, the court noted.
On Friday, Wells Fargo and Capital Bankcard asked the judge to stay the action until a judge in a similar TCPA lawsuit over the same unsolicited 4-page fax considers whether to grant class certification.
However, before the judge granted a rule on the stay, the plaintiff accepted Wells Fargo’s offer of settlement. The $7,500 settlement amount will be entered as a judgment against Wells Fargo and Capital Bankcard, and it applies only to Heather’s own claim.
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If you were contacted on your cell phone by a company via an unsolicited text message (text spam) or prerecorded voice message (robocall), you may be eligible for compensation under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
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