Texans for Lawsuit Reform

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In the News

Phoney Lawsuits: Polish Immigrant Concludes Six-Figure Run By Settling 31st Lawsuit

Forbes, January 17, 2018
By: Karen Kidd

The last of a Polish immigrant’s 31 Telephone Consumer Protection Act lawsuits, which paid out more than $800,000, has settled, but the need to reform telemarketing regulation continues, a privacy and securities class actions defense lawyer says.

“Everyone in America knows that the TCPA isn’t stopping unwanted calls,” Jeffrey S. Jacobson, partner and co-chair with Kelley Drye & Warren’s class action group in New York, told Legal Newsline.

“Most of the spam calls we receive at home and on our mobile phones, however, are coming from intentional bad actors in other countries who are beyond the reach of private lawsuits.”

Jacobson is former director of the New Jersey Division of Law and former chief counsel to the New Jersey attorney general.

Not all private TCPA cases against U.S. companies are meritless, Jacobson said.

“But cases like this one show that the TCPA is badly in need of reform,” he said.

In late December, settlement of the TCPA litigation brought by Jan Konopca against FDS Bank was announced in a letter filed by an attorney with Marcus & Zelman, which represents Konopca, with a magistrate judge in New Jersey federal court.

The letter did not include details about the settlement but the company previously told the court Konopca earned more than $800,000 from his other 30 lawsuits.

Konopca has three phone numbers, one of which­ had belonged to a landline but was moved to a cellphone after Konopca claimed squirrels had repeatedly chewed into his landline’s wires, and he used calls to those numbers as the basis for his serial litigation.

In November, New Jersey U.S. District Court Judge Peter Sheridan said “it is most probable that [Konopca] manufactured the harm based on his motivation to be awarded monetary awards in the lawsuits” but that Konopca never gave consent for the 612 calls he received.

Konopca’s serial litigation is part of a Legal Newsline’s continuing coverage that examines the cases of individuals who have found a source of income by filing lawsuits under the federal telemarketing law.

The convergence of the TCPA and opportunistic litigants isn’t news to Jacobson.

“I have seen the Telephone Consumer Protection Act in operation from every angle, as a defense lawyer and in an enforcement capacity in the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office,” he said. “The TCPA serves an important consumer protection function, but TCPA lawsuits can be every bit as abusive as unwanted calls.”

Defendants in such cases often find defending themselves to be untenable, Jacobson said.

“If you don’t want to settle, and you don’t want to run the risk of a trial, you have to look for a Door No. 3,” he said.

“Here, the defendants attacked the plaintiff as an abusive TCPA litigant who goes out of his way to invite supposedly unwanted calls just so he can sue over them. It was undisputed that the plaintiff has ‘earned’ $800,000 from bringing TCPA cases since 2010, which is a nice living.”

However, it ultimately won’t be defendants in Konopca’s cases who will pay for the settlements, Jacobson said.

“I think it is important to note that the money he received didn’t come from thin air,” he said. “It came from the customers of the businesses he sued, who paid that money in the form of higher prices.”

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Texans for Lawsuit Reform

25 minutes ago

Texans for Lawsuit Reform

In case you missed it - 15 Harris County judges resolved fewer felony cases during the pandemic, and all 23 courts have more pending cases now than when the COVID epidemic began. As of March, there were over 48,000 pending active cases in Criminal District Court. Read and share: bit.ly/3yeuPc7 ... See MoreSee Less

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'Do your job,' victim tells judge in Harris County's slowest court

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Fifteen judges resolved fewer felony cases during the pandemic and all 23 courts have more pending cases now than when the pandemic began. Harris County Judge Ramona Franklin, of the 338th Criminal Di...
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Texans for Lawsuit Reform

1 day ago

Texans for Lawsuit Reform

The Dallas County DA argued a judge’s impartiality could reasonably be questioned after she lowered a defendant’s bail considerably while his defense lawyer is one of her top campaign contributors, and then raised his bail after media reports about her rulings. Read and share: bit.ly/3lfQMzM ... See MoreSee Less

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Dallas judge under scrutiny for bail rulings recuses herself from cases

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Judge Chika Anyiam, of Criminal District Court 7, recused herself Monday from 10 felony cases against Julio Guerrero. A Dallas County judge who faced public scrutiny for lowering a murder suspect’s ...
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Texans for Lawsuit Reform

2 days ago

Texans for Lawsuit Reform

TLR General Counsel Lee Parsley joined the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform podcast to discuss nuclear verdicts in the trucking industry and what legislators can do to ensure that excessive lawsuits don't shut down this vital industry. Listen and share: bit.ly/3wjgKJ9 ... See MoreSee Less

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Nuclear Verdicts Create Litigation "Vortex" for Trucking Industry

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In this episode of Cause for Action, Nathan Morris, senior vice president, legal reform advocacy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform, is joined by Lee Parsley, the general couns...
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lawsuitreform avatarTLR@lawsuitreform·
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Want to make a difference in the fight against lawsuit abuse? Join the TLR team today! #stoplawsuitabuse

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lawsuitreform avatarTLR@lawsuitreform·
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The Dallas County DA argued a judge’s impartiality could be questioned after she lowered a defendant’s bail while his defense lawyer is one of her top campaign contributors and then raised his bail after media reports about her rulings. Read & RT:

Dallas judge under scrutiny for bail rulings recuses herself from cases

Judge Chika Anyiam, of Criminal District Court 7, recused herself Monday from 10 felony cases against Julio Guerrero. A Dallas County judge who faced ...

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17 May 1526684119077371904

TLR is working to make the Texas legal system fair, efficient, and accessible for all. Learn more: #tortreform

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TLR's objective is to restore litigation to its traditional and appropriate role in our society. A lawsuit takes a heavy emotional and financial toll ...

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