Congratulations to our friends, Mike Kazerouni and Abbas Kazerounian of Kazerouni Law Group, APC, on the recent $5,000,000 settlement they received on behalf of their client. Kazerouni Law Firm, APC and their co-lead counsel, Andrew Shamis of Shamis & Gentile, P.A. and Scott Edelsberg of Edelsberg Law, filed a class-action suit on July 22, 2019, in the United States District Court of Southern Florida, Docket #1:19-cv-23028-DPG.
The suit alleged the Defendant violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”), 47 U.S.C. § 227, by sending “unsolicited marketing, harming thousands of consumers in the process.” Plaintiff further alleged the Defendant’s “illegal conduct” caused an “invasion of privacy, harassment, aggravation, and disruption of the daily life of thousands of individuals.”
The suit further alleged the Defendant sent multiple unsolicited messages to the Plaintiff from a 5-digit code known as a “short code.” This practice allowed the Defendant to send “SMS text messages en masse, while deceiving recipients into believing that the message was personalized and sent from a telephone number operated by an individual.”
TCPA prohibits the following:
- Any person from dialing a cellular phone number;
- Using an “Automatic Telephone Dialing System (“ATDS”), which stores or produces telephone numbers that can be called using a
random or sequential number generator”; and, - Without the recipient’s approval.
Plaintiff asserted Defendant’s violations of TCPA resulted in a “proposed class numbering in the tens of thousands” and sought up to $1,500.00 in damages for each infringement, which exceeded the “$5,000,000.00 threshold for federal court jurisdiction under the Class Action Fairness Act (‘CAFA’).
After months of litigation, the Court entered its Order Granting Final Approval to Class Action Settlement and Final Judgment on September 4, 2020, requiring the Defendant to “make available up to approximately $4,025,000.00 in cash or $5,175,000.00 in vouchers for the Settlement Class.”
Advocate Capital, Inc. is proud of the work Kazerouni Law Group, APC is doing to protect our consumer rights. Their efforts are changing the national narrative by holding offenders responsible for their actions.
Susan Greene
Executive Client Manager
