Hi TCPAWorld! The Dame here with an interesting lawsuit against a company from my home state of Louisiana. And I’ll start by admitting that, despite my family being in the seafood industry for five generations, I had no idea you could order live crawfish online and have them delivered straight to your door. This company named Louisiana Crawfish Company does just that. And a few discount offers via text—allegedly sent a little too early—have now landed this company in a federal class action lawsuit.

The lawsuit, filed in the Central District of California by plaintiff Mason Ibarra (“Plaintiff”), accuses Louisiana Crawfish Company of violating the TCPA by sending at least 10 unsolicited marketing texts before 8 AM. According to the complaint, texts were sent as early as 6:40 AM, 7:01 AM, and 7:30 AM—times the TCPA clearly prohibits for telemarketing communications. Plaintiff is seeking statutory damages of $500 per text, or $1,500 per text if the violations are deemed willful, along with an injunction to prevent further messages.

Under the TCPA, businesses can’t make telemarketing calls or texts before 8 AM or after 9 PM (local time for the recipient).

However, my reading of the TCPA is that call time restrictions only restricts “telephone solicitations” to these call time hours—which means calls made with consent or an established business relationship with the recipient are not subject to these restrictions. And Plaintiff does not allege that these texts were nonconsensual. Plaintiff only alleges that he “never signed any type of authorization permitting or allowing Defendant to send them telephone solicitations before 8 am or after 9 pm.”

Either way, an easy mistake to avoid. And honestly, even the biggest of companies get caught up in these time call restriction cases.