In a ruling that was first publicized on TCPAWorld.com, a District Court judge in Illinois has ruled that an insurance company is vicariously liable for the actions of the owners of two independent company brokerages that hired a lead generation company which placed the calls the led to this Telephone Consumer Protection Act lawsuit.
The Background: The plaintiff put his name on the defendant’s Do Not Call list before July 2020. The owners of two agencies hired a company that subcontracted with another company that placed the calls at issue — five in total.
- The two agencies were allowed to initiate their own marketing campaigns and were allowed to use non-contracted telemarketers as long as those telemarketers followed the defendant’s Do Not Call policy.
- The owner of Transfer Kings, the company hired by the two agencies, did not tell either that he had subcontracted the work out to another company, a lead generator called Atlantic Telemarketing.
- The defendant “strongly suggests” that the plaintiff entered his phone number and a pseudonym on a website that ended up being included in a list that was purchased by Transfer Kings or Atlantic Telemarketing. Whomever entered the name and phone number on the website had to consent to being contacted.
- Of the five calls, the plaintiff answered none of them, but on two occasions called the number back. The plaintiff said his name was Michael Johnson.
- The plaintiff admitted to using pseudonyms as a means of getting information about who was calling to get the calls to stop.
The Ruling: The defendant was unable to submit evidence to prove how it came to possess the plaintiff’s phone number, which means it could not disprove the plaintiff’s argument that he never gave written consent to be contacted, ruled Judge Joan B. Gottschall of the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
- Judge Gottschall then went into detail explaining why the defendant should be held vicariously liable for the calls in question.
- “Accordingly, the undisputed material summary judgment evidence establishes that: (1) Gilmond and Fleming were Allstate’s agents with actual authority to hire telemarketing vendors and appoint them as subagents; (2) they appointed Transfer Kings as a subagent; and (3) Transfer Kings appointed Atlantic as its subagent,” she wrote.