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Time Warner Cable Owes $229,500 To Woman It Would Not Stop Calling
HughPickens.com writes: Reuters reports that a Manhattan federal judge has ruled Time Warner Cable must pay Araceli King $229,500 for placing 153 automated calls meant for someone else to her cellphone in less than a year, even after she told them to stop. King accused Time Warner Cable of harassing her by leaving messages for Luiz Perez, who once held her cellphone number, even after she made clear who she was in a seven-minute discussion with a company representative. Time Warner Cable countered that it was not liable to King under the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act, a law meant to curb robocall and telemarketing abuses, because it believed it was calling Perez, who had consented to the calls. In awarding triple damages of $1,500 per call for willfully violating that law, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said "a responsible business" would have tried harder to find Perez and address the problem. While Time Warner argued that they were unaware King ever asked to be on the company's "do not call list," Hellerstein determined, "there is no doubt King made this revocation." He wrote that the company "could not be bothered" to update King's information, even after she filed suit against TWC in March of 2014. The judge said 74 of the calls had been placed after King sued and that it was "incredible" to believe Time Warner Cable when it said it still did not know she objected. "Companies are using computers to dial phone numbers," says King's lawyer Sergei Lemberg. "They benefit from efficiency, but there is a cost when they make people's lives miserable. This was one such case."
They did make her life miserable up to the point she gets that money, if she ever does.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
She got 229,500 USD, so they didn't really make her life miserable.
The thief had to give the stuff he stole back so he never really stole it?
It's not like they gave her 1,500 USD every time they called. If that had been the case they would have stopped earlier. The intention was to make her life miserable and not compensate for that.
The exec's didn't do it, the corporation did, and we can't send corporations to jail, cause if we did that they'd want other rights too... like free speech (in the form of money) and religious freedom (in the form of not spending money).
Corporations are people 2.0, they have many of the benefits of being people, and fewer detriments of being people.
In the end the customer always pays.
The theory is that if they screw up enough and they keep increasing costs that customers will go elsewhere. That's all nice on paper but some industries have little or no competition so the customers never really leave .. or not enough of them. Corporate/Government behavior is not likely to change unless individuals are held responsible.
In the end the customer/taxpayer always pays.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
This assumes customers will always pay whatever is asked for them. If TW could charge more, they already would.
Also, a tax deduction doesn't mean it's free for them. All it means they get to substract $229,500 from their taxable income. They still have to pay $229,500 out of their pocket.
They will just pass this cost and its legal costs onto the consumer.
Of course they will. It's either that or they own a money printing press, right? I see this all the time: "they'll just pass the cost on to consumers". I'm at a loss to determine what you think the alternative would be. Every business technically passes all their costs to their customers as the customers are how they make money. When you pay your TW bill (if you have TW) then part of that bill is covering legal expenses when they screw up. Same as when you buy a can of pop at Walmart, Kroger, etc.
And then take both as an expense tax deduction.
It surprised me to find that they can deduct this. The IRS code doesn't allow deduction of penalties paid to governmental agencies, but apparently civil non-governmental judgements are deductable.
Do you have ESP?
We all hate personal injury lawyers and their shady advertisement. But when corporations behave like this, they are the only leverage an ordinary consumer has.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
For Time Warner it is a purposeful, long standing choice and not a knee jerk reaction. You don't get something this pervasive and long lasting without an overall corporate culture that promotes it. There is a reason their frequent billing mistakes are always in their favor: they aren't mistakes at all.
Fight fire with fire. Let Lenny talk to them and amuse us at the same time.
https://youtu.be/m674Hq7-tyQ
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
If they could get away with just raising consumer prices to cover this cost, they should have done it regardless of whether this lawsuit ever existed. By saying "They will just pass the cost onto consumers" you are also saying, TWC will not raise consumer costs unless they are forced to by their own costs (e.g. legal) going up. I don't think this is true. I think they are charging whatever the market will bear at any given time, and given that they have no competition, their lawsuits have no effect on the market.
I'm not a big fan of punitive damages payable to the victim. (In my country there's no such thing; there are fines payable to the state, and actual damages payable to the victim, with very small amounts being paid for unquantifiable stuff like "mental anguish"). I'm also not a big fan of people landing a huge payday because of a small "jackpot" mishap or being slighted in some small way by a large, rich company.
However, I am in favour of strict anti spam laws and rules against robocalls. $1500 per unlawful unsolicited call does not sound excessive to me, either as a fine paid by the company or as a sum received by the victim. I wish we had a similar law. But yes... if you are going to call someone 150 times, even after the person points out that you have the wrong person, then you are going to pay the fine 150x. Simple math.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Corporations like Time Warner truly believe they are above the law. They will not pay this woman. Ever. In fact, my bet is that they will SPEND $500,000 or more, to avoid paying $299,000 -- and here's why -- Time Warner's lawyers will advise the company to appeal, appeal, appeal, because if they pay, it will open the door to more lawsuits.
Instead, if they take a hard stance, and essentially, run the plaintiff into the poorhouse on legal fees, they will come out the winner in a war of attrition.
And then also, they will lobby for more Tort reform in Washington DC, so that consumers/citizens *never* have legal recourse against abuses by the ruling class.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.