Dish, TCPA Plaintiffs Continue Clash Over Class Member Verification

Dish Network and the plaintiff in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act class-action complaint against it continue to clash (see 1705110010) over post-trial procedures. Dish Network in a reply (in Pacer) Friday in U.S. District Court in Greensboro, North Carolina, said only its proposal has a legally acceptable route for determining which ostensible class members were phone subscribers or receivers of calls, and described the plaintiff's rival proposal as lacking legal support and "reckless" since it would distribute judgment proceeds "without a modicum of reasonable safeguards." Dish said it's "a transparent attempt to artificially inflate the aggregate dollar amount of a judgment and class counsel's related fewer award" without regard to whether the award check beneficiaries should actually receive part of the judgment. Plaintiff Thomas Krakauer and the others in their reply (in Pacer) Friday said Dish "remains in denial" that the court certified the case as a class action and that a jury found Dish violated TCPA more than 51,000 times. The plaintiffs' post-trial procedure proposal would ensure a maximum number of class members are compensated, while Dish's "is designed to do exactly the opposite," Krakauer and the others said. 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).