Plaintiff Sues to Stop Insurer from ‘Incessantly Calling His Phone’
Montgomery, Texas, consumer Jerry Baldridge brought suit Wednesday against Great Western Insurance for Telephone Consumer Protection Act violations and “to protect his privacy rights, namely the right to be left alone from unwanted telemarketing phone calls,” according to his class…
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action (docket 4:23-cv-04309) in U.S. District Court for Southern Texas in Houston. His lawsuit seeks to get telemarketers like Great Western “to stop incessantly calling his phone” and those of the putative class members’ phones despite not having given prior express consent to receive prerecorded or artificial voice calls, and despite having listed their numbers on the national do not call registry, said the class action. The TCPA’s private right of enforcement “is critical to stopping the proliferation of these unwanted telemarketing calls,” it added. Baldridge listed his number on the DNC registry since January 2006 “to obtain solitude from unwanted telemarketing calls,” said his complaint. Baldridge nevertheless received at least two calls from Great Western in December promoting its “final expense insurance” services to cover funeral and cremation costs, it said. If Great Western directly placed the calls at issue to Baldridge, it’s “directly liable” for those unlawful calls, it said. And if Great Western hired third-party telemarketers “currently unknown” to Baldridge to place those calls, the company isn’t permitted under the law “to outsource and contract its way out of liability by directing and benefitting from its agents’ TCPA violations,” it said.