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The $7 Million Text Message
By Lily Garza
September 22, 2008
It turns out that unsolicited text messages aren't just annoying, they may be illegal. Members of a class action lawsuit won a $7 million settlement against boot and clothing manufacturer, Timberland last week.
The lead plaintiff, Chicago resident Jeffery Weinstein, decided to sue after receiving a text message offering a 20% discount on the company's website in December 2005. He claims he had been having a bad day and that annoying little text message was just too much.
"I thought: There has to be a law against something like this." Weinstein said, according the Chicago Sun-Times.
The federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act, passed in 1991, to help control unsolicited phone calls was supplemented in 2003 to include wireless personal devices such as cell phones but judges have previously argued over whether that includes text messages.
Timberland, along with GSI Commerce, who worked with Timberland to create the text message campaign, has established a fund to pay the settlement but would not admit any wrongdoing. According to court documents, the company agreed to settle to "avoid the high cost of litigation."
Weinstein stands to get only $5,000 of the settlement but claims that he was more concerned about the principle than the money.
"I just imagined being in meetings and having text message after text message coming in,'' he said. "'Refinance your mortgage,' 'Get rich quick,' 'Enhance various body parts.' I thought, 'Hell, no! This needs to stop before it becomes totally uncontrollable.
Even those who were not part of the class-action can get a piece of the settlement if they received one of Timberland's text messages. Anyone with a claim may be eligible to receive up to $150 from the settlement fund. A website is currently being set up to take claims at www.TimberlandTextSettlement.com. United States District Court Judge Wayne Anderson is expected to approve final terms of the agreement by December.
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