Shelling it Out– New Ruling Shows CIPA Cases Can Be Even More Dangerous than TCPA (And I Take the Stage in an Hour!)

Quick one for you TCPAWorld.

In Collins v. Enver Solar, SACV19-00146-JLS-KES, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 115616 (C.D. Cal. May 26, 2021) we get a peek at how dangerous claims under California’s famous Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) can be.

The case law is in flux around CIPA–maybe I should start CIPAworld.com?–but the claims carry a $5,000.00 per violation price tag, which is literally 10x worse than the TCPA’s comparatively meager $500.00 base violation cost.

In Collins the Defendant fell into default–never a good idea–and the Court granted judgment on six (count ’em 6) phone calls. As to the TCPA the Court found the first call wasn’t a willful violation but all calls after Plaintiff allegedly asked for calls to stop were trebled. By my advanced mathematical calculations, that brings the TCPA judgment to $8k ($500 + $1,500(7)=$8,000.)

Meanwhile those same six phone calls–which were allegedly recorded by Defendant without consent in violation of CIPA–resulted in liability of $5,000.00 additional dollars each, or $30k total.

So overall judgment on six phone calls was $38k against the Defendant. Probably just disclose the call is being recorded next time– but be sure not to use a pre-recorded voice to do it!

For those of you in Austin, I will see you in les than an hour (hopefully.) Last night was pleasant enough–Nima and the crew are good company–but today is the show. Top hat and all that. I’ll do some coverage of the event later.

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