Company Will Settle Sunrun Lawsuit over Robocalling for $5.5M

For the second time in as many years, a Sunrun TCPA lawsuit over allegations of illegal robocall marketing practices has resulted in a $5.5 million settlement deal.

U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg of the district court in California granted his preliminary approval of the settlement on September 16. The deal sets Sunrun up to pay out an estimated $57 to each of the participants in the class action lawsuit, Seeborg’s preliminary approval order indicated.

At issue were claims made by lead plaintiff William Loftus that the San Francisco-based Sunrun repeated used robocalling techniques outlawed by the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act while trying to sell solar panels. Loftus, of Ventura County, California, filed the class action lawsuit March 19, 2019.

Loftus said the company frequently made robocalls using automatic dialing systems and “targeted, among other phone lines, cellular telephones and numbers listed on the National Do Not Call Registry,” all in an attempt to sell solar panels, the class action lawsuit said.

Proposed Sunrun Lawsuit Settlement Similar to the Last

The proposed settlement comes just about two years after another Sunrun lawsuit involving robocalls was similarly settled. In that case, a woman named Lynn Slovin filed a class action lawsuit claiming Sunrun and Clean Energy Experts LLC engaged in telephone marketing that violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The business were selling solar products then, too, using prerecorded messages and automated phone dialers.

That settlement, also for $5.5 million, covered calls made between Nov. 20, 2011 and Aug. 21, 2018. In addition to the financial payout, the class action settlement included an agreement that the solar products companies would comply with monitoring over the next four years to ensure they did not use robocalls unlawfully again. That said, the companies admitted no wrongdoing.

“Sunrun/CEE have denied and continue to deny each, and every material factual allegation and all claims asserted against them in the [class action],” the settlement documents they submitted said.

Telephone Consumer Protection Act Explained

In 1991, Congress passed the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or TCPA, to restrict the use of automatic telephone dialing systems, artificial or prerecorded voice messages and text messages. It also required businesses, organizations, anyone making telephone solicitations to maintain do-not-call lists.

The Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, is responsible for regulating and enforcing the law.

More recently, in 2012, new technology and trends in marketing prompted the FCC to issue updated TCPA guidelines to “require telemarketers to obtain prior express written consent from consumers before robocalling or texting them … and to require telemarketers to provide an automated, interactive ‘opt-out’ mechanism … so consumers can immediately tell the telemarketer to stop calling.”

Passing the law and updating its regulations hasn’t put an end to the practice.

In May 2019, NBC News reported the FCC and the Federal Trade commission “receive a mind-boggling number of complaints monthly from Americans who can’t stand the growing scourge of scam calls.” In 2018, the FCC got “232,000 complaints regarding unwanted robocalls and telemarketing offers, while the FTC received more than 3.7 million robocall complaints alone,” the report said.

History of TCPA Allegations and Class Actions

In the Loftus case, lawyers for plaintiffs made a point of saying the percentage of Telephone Consumer Protection Act violations that wind up in court is small compared to the number of violations themselves – and they seemed to draw a parallel to Sunrun.

“For every 7,000,000 robocalls, there’s only one TCPA lawsuit in federal court,” the plaintiffs’ filing said. “Demonstrating the massive scope of its robocalling, Sunrun has lost this 1-in-7,000,000 lottery repeatedly, being sued under the TCPA time and again.”

The class action lists seven other lawsuits against Sunrun, which it refers to as one of the largest solar energy companies in the United States, filed in the last five years. Five of them were filed in the last two years.

Last month, the company tried unsuccessfully to get another case against it – this time for unsolicited and unwanted text messages– dismissed. That Sunrun lawsuit remains pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

According to the Loftus class action lawsuit, the lead plaintiff started getting calls from Sunrun in January 2019. He had never done business with the company and when the calls came in, they featured the kind of clicking sounds that are a hallmark of autodialing systems followed by prerecorded messages about Sunrun’s solar energy products.

A second named plaintiff, Sidney Naiman of Maricopa County, Arizona, claimed he, too, received numerous unsolicited and unwanted robocalls from Sunrun. His began coming in March 2019, offering solar energy goods and services, the class action lawsuit said.

Both plaintiffs said Sunrun was able, through its automated dialing system, to mimic local telephone numbers, leading the men to believe the calls were from someone in their communities.

The Sunrun Class Action Lawsuit is William Loftus, et al. v. Sunrun Inc., Case No. 3:19-cv-01608, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Join a Free TCPA Class Action Lawsuit Investigation

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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This article is not legal advice. It is presented
for informational purposes only.