Another day, another TCPA class action naming a company’s CEO individually along with the company filed by a repeat TCPA litigator.

Today’s case involves a suit against ETN America–operator of contractors99.com–along with CEO Shlomi Cohen.

The suit is brought in federal court out in Pennsylvania– although it looks like Cohen lives in California.

Regardless the suit claims ETN sent messages posing as “Install America” to promote window repairs. Apparently Friel claims he received both text messages and prerecorded calls without his consent.

He sue not only ETN but also CEO Cohen claiming:

Mr. Cohen personally participated in the actions complained of by: (a) selecting the script that was going to be used on the calling; (b) personally approving in the call center operations and (d) personally authorizing any other telemarketing conduct of ETN America.

Hmmm. I wonder what “(c)” was.

Sloppy sloppy.

Regardless as Cohen is alleged to be the “primary operator” of the home improvements and windows company Friel is looking to hold him personally liable for the conduct at issue.

The complaint seeks to certify the following classes:

Robocall Class: All persons in the United States who, (1) within four years prior to the  commencement of this litigation until the class is certified (2) received one or more calls on their cellular telephone or any other protected telephone service (3) from or on behalf of Defendants, (4) sent using the same, or substantially similar, pre-recorded message used to contact the Plaintiff.

National Do Not Call Registry Class: All persons within the United States: (1) whose residential telephone numbers were on the National Do Not Call Registry for at least 31 days; (2) but who received more than one telephone solicitation call from Defendants or a third party acting on Defendants’ behalf; (3) within a 12- month period; (4) within the four years prior to the filing of the Complaint.

These class definitions are plainly overly broad since they do not exclude individuals that consented to receive calls, but we will see what the court has to say about that.

Plaintiff’s lawyer is the Wolf– Anthony Paronich. So we will see where this goes.

Defendants have not made an appearance and I don’t know who their counsel will be.

Will keep an eye on this one to see if any of these allegations are true.

Full complaint here: Complaint Friel

A few take aways:

1. PERSONAL LIABILITY is a big risk in TCPAWorld folks. The corporate form will not protect you from being sued!
2. Seeing an uptick in TCPA suits in home improvement–be careful! If you’re in this vertical be sure to head out LCOC III to stay up to date on all tips and tricks to stay out of trouble!
3. I’m going to guess this case arose out of third-party lead generation. Cannot emphasize enough how important it is to work with quality lead gen partners folks. With the recent explosion in marketing robocalls it is clear the bad guys are on the loose again– don’t feed the wolf!