Dish, TCPA Complaint Plaintiffs at Odds Over Claims Process

Dish Network and plaintiffs in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) class-action suit against the company are at odds over how to handle claims. In a post-trial procedures motion (in Pacer) filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Greensboro, North Carolina, Dish said it wants to be able to challenge each claim post-trial. Dish said its proposed post-trial procedures -- each ostensible class member filing a claim form, with jury trials for each one where the parties disagree and the court finds material issues of fact -- "offer a fair, reasonable and practical approach." Plaintiff Thomas Krakauer and the others in a separate motion (in Pacer) Wednesday said Dish's suggested claims process is unduly burdensome in that it proposes adversarial proceeds in contests of payments that, in most cases, would likely amount to a few hundred dollars. "Why Dish wants these procedures is ... clear: it wants the money back. Dish should not get the money back," the plaintiffs said, saying the court should use the class member identification methods similar to what it used at the class notice stage. And it proposed any unclaimed funds after distribution not go to Dish, since the jury found it liable for the 51,119 TCPA violations alleged in the trial, but be directed as escheat to the government, which would determine recipients after distribution. A 10-person jury in January awarded class members $400 per TCPA violation and plaintiffs are seeking a court enhancement to increase the award to $1,200 per violation (see 1702140010).