San Diego, CA: A class action lawsuit has been filed in U.S. District Court in California against NASCAR alleging that a text message promoting coverage of the 2011 Daytona 500 sent to Sprint phones violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
The unsolicited text in question was one that was sent February 19, 2011 to California resident Badie Jaber that said: "FREE NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile lets you watch the action from Daytona live on your phone. Download now: http://sprint.us/nascar Reply END to stop."
According to the lawsuit, that text message was placed from an automatic telephone dialing system in violation of law. The lawsuit also claims that a follow-up text notifying Jaber that she had been removed from the list also was illegal. The lawsuit claims: "[NASCAR] illegally contacted plaintiff and [others] via their cellular telephones by using an unsolicited and/or confirmatory text message, thereby causing [them] to incur certain cellular telephone charges or reduce cellular telephone time for which [they] previously paid and invading the privacy of [them]."
The lawsuit asks for $1,500 for each violation of the code, however, it does not specify how many alleged violations took place but states that the damages would be greater than $5 million, which is the threshold for federal court jurisdiction in such a case.
