Lawyers for the plaintiff in a case about using automated dialing machines to send unsolicited text messages to cell phones were pleased with an appeals court ruling upholding a ban on the practice and believed the ruling would set a precedent.
“This is the first case of its kind in the country,” said Steven Rudner, an attorney for Rodney Joffe, who sued Acacia Mortgage Corp. for sending text message spam to his cell phone. He argued the case would probably set a precedent about sending unsolicited text messages to cell phones.
On Tuesday, an Arizona appellate court ruled that a ban on automatic dialers spelled out in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 applies to sending e-mail text messages with unsolicited advertisements, even though text messaging was not widely used at the time, according to news reports.
Rudner said the trail judge’s decision was very well reasoned and he would be “stunned” if Acacia appealed.
Lawyers for Acacia did not return calls at deadline.
This case has been dragging on for nearly five years.
In early 2001, Joffe, chairman of Whitehat, filed a lawsuit in small claims court against Acacia Mortgage Co. that delivered an unsolicited advertisement to his cell phone (Direct Newsline, March 29, 2001).
Joffe, outraged by the advertisement that reached him during a performance of “Riverdance” in Phoenix, vowed to campaign against cell phone spam.
Acacia reportedly argued that it only sent an e-mail and did not “call” Joffe’s cell phone, but the three-judge Court of Appeals said that was an incomplete description of what the company did when it used e-mail to indirectly connect to Joffe’s cell phone via his service provider’s e-mail system.
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