Woman Sues over Phone Calls From Midland Credit Management

A Florida woman is taking legal action after receiving too many unwanted phone calls from Midland Credit Management.

Plaintiff Emma L. has filed a lawsuit in Florida federal court against Midland Credit Management, Inc., alleging violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

As a resident and citizen of the state of Florida, Emma says that Midland Credit Management called her cellular phone hundreds of times in an attempt to collect a debt that she owed. According to the lawsuit, some of the phone calls from Midland Credit Management were made using an “automatic telephone dialing system” (ATDS) or an artificial or prerecorded voice.

Emma says she knew an ATDS was used because of the vast number of calls she received from the company and because she would hear a pause whenever she answered the phone, before a voice from the company’s representative came on the line.

Emma received phone calls from Midland Credit Management for four years, she says. She allegedly asked the company several times to stop calling her. According to the TCPA lawsuit, in February 2017, she informed a representative that the “calls to her cellular telephone were harassing and demanded that defendant cease calling her cellular telephone immediately.”

Each subsequent call made thereafter were made without “expressed consent” and a violation of the TCPA, she argues.

According to the lawsuit, “from each and every call placed without expressed consent by defendant to plaintiff’s cellular telephone, plaintiff suffered the injury of invasion of privacy and the intrusion upon her right of seclusion.”

Emma files the TCPA lawsuit on multiple counts including a violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, Florida Consumer Collection Practices Act (FCCPA), Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA).

Telephone Consumer Protection Act

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act was enacted by Congress in 1991 and restricts the use of artificial or prerecorded voice and the use of automatic telephone dialing systems. The law prohibits using such equipment to place calls to consumers who have not provided express consent to be contacted, or who have expressly asked not to be contacted.

Violations of the TCPA are subject to $500 in statutory damages for each violation. These damages may be trebled up to $1,500 per violation.

According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the TCPA was enacted to curtail the increasing amount of telephone marketing calls. Some rules of the TCPA were revised in 2012, but essentially the TCPA requires telemarketers to obtain prior express consent from a consumer before contacting them.

An established business relationship is no longer sufficient to allow telemarketers to contact consumers. Moreover, telemarketers must allow an “opt-out” mechanism to allow consumers a way to prevent and inhibit any additional telephone calls made by telemarketers.

A national Do-Not-Call registry was also established in October 2003 covering all interstate and intrastate calls.

According to the FCC, “to reduce the number of hang-up and dead air calls consumers experience, the Commissions telemarketing rules also contain restrictions on the use of autodialers and requirements for transmitting caller ID information.”

The Midland Credit Management Lawsuit is Case No. 8:17-cv-02967-SDM-TGW, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division.

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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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