WHAT IS A STOP REQUEST?: Palm Beach Tan to Pay $2.5MM to Settle TCPA Suit for Text Messages Sent After Stop Requests–And They Provide a Handy List of Stop Requests

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Palm Beach Tan is about to be out of pocket $2.5MM following a TCPA settlement related to sending SMS messages after receipt of a stop notification but the bigger story may be the list of “stop” requests listed in the agreement.

First, the case is  Hudson v. Palm Beach Tan, Inc., No. 1:23-cv-00486-UA-JEP, (M.D.N.C.) and each class member is set to receive up to $1,500.00– a huge windfall considering SMS may no longer even be covered by the TCPA’s DNC provisions.

Class counsel in this one is Lemberg Law LLC– it has been a while since we have seen him on the scoreboard with a large class resolution but it looks like he’s back in a big way.

Interestingly, the class is defined as “all persons within the Class Period sent a Palm Beach Tan Text Message after that phone number sent an inbound text message Stop Request.”

This is a bit of unusual class definition focusing on the transmission (rather than receipt) of a stop notification to PBT.

But here’s the key– the definition of Stop Request includes:

“stop,” “stopall,” “unsubscribe,” “unsub,” “cancel,” “canceled,” “end,” “quit,” “revoke,” “cease,” “optout,” “opt out,” “opt-out,” “opted out,” “opt stop,” “block,” “blocked,” “leave,” “no,” “pause,” “do not,” “don’t want,” “don’t text,” “don’t,” “help,” “desist,” “remove,” “take me off,” “take off,” “off,” “exit,” “delete,” “decline,” “halt,” “discontinue,” “terminate,” “withdraw,” “refuse,” “lose,” “not consent,” “illegal,” “violate,” “violation,” “harassment,” “harassing,” “wrong,” or any profanity or expletive cease directive, in any combination of upper and lower case letters, or any variant thereof, including variants where such words or phrases are misspelled, where such words or phrases comprise only part of the inbound text message, or where the inbound text message includes a stop sign emoji.

Little free advice– if your system doesn’t honor each of these response types as an opt out you are potentially in big trouble. So be smart!

Deadline to make a claim or opt out of this one is October 4, 2026.

And if you’re in the lead generation game (buying or selling leads) you MUST watch Deserve to Win Ep. 48 with Rich Kahn– up to 40% of leads are fraud!

 

Chat soon.

 

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Published by Eric "Czar" Troutman

The Czar of TCPAWorld Eric Troutman is one of the country’s prominent class action defense lawyers and is nationally recognized in Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) litigation and compliance. He has served as lead defense counsel in more than 70 national TCPA class actions and has litigated nearly a thousand individual TCPA cases in his role as national strategic litigation counsel for major banks and finance companies. He also helps industry participants build TCPA-compliant processes, policies, and systems. Eric has built a national litigation practice based upon deep experience, rigorous analysis and extraordinary responsiveness. Eric and his team feel equally at home litigating multibillion dollar telecommunications class actions in federal court as they do developing and executing national litigation strategies for institutions facing an onslaught of individual TCPA matters. They thrive in each of these roles – delivering consistently excellent results – while never losing sight of the client experience. While many firms now tout TCPA expertise, Eric has been there from the beginning. He built one of the country’s first TCPA-only defense teams and began serving as national TCPA counsel for his clients nearly a decade ago. This perspective allows him to swiftly develop the right litigation strategies for dealing with recurring problems, without wasting time on tactics that are bound to fail. Eric’s rich historical perspective and encyclopedic knowledge of the TCPA landscape also make him an invaluable resource to institutional compliance teams struggling to comply with the shifting regulatory landscape. No task is too small – or too big. Indeed, Eric and his team have helped build TCPA-compliant systems and processes for some of the largest and most complex corporate entities in the country. He commonly works with in-house compliance counsel to build and implement enterprise and business-line specific TCPA solutions, performs TCPA audits and drafts and reviews proposed TCPA policies and procedures. He and his team also have the technical expertise necessary to assist call centers seeking to develop TCPA-resistant call path architecture or to modify existing telephony and software integration to better insulate from potential TCPA exposure. Eric has built a reputation for thought leadership. An avid blogger and speaker, he has been at the forefront of the industry’s effort to push for clarity and a return to sanity for the TCPA for years. He was selected to advocate for the financial services industry on important TCPA issues before the Federal Communications Commission and co-authored the nation’s only comprehensive practice guide on TCPA defense. In his spare time, Eric leads defense teams representing banks and other financial services companies in consumer finance litigation matters. He has experience representing clients in UCC, TILA, RESPA FCRA, CCRA, CLRA, FDCPA, RFDCPA and FCCPA claims, as well as in fraud and bank operations issues.

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