I own a business and have a fax machine. I get a few junk faxes now and then. Early in 2012 I received a fax (ironic, huh) about a class action lawsuit against one company that had sent me junk faxes. I signed on and a few months later received a check for just over a hundred bucks:)
A month later I joined in another class action and got a settlement check for $90.
Today I’ve gotten another contact about a class action lawsuit for junk faxes.
So, my general question: What’s up? Was there some sort of recent change in the law that has made this all possible? Why is the number of junk faxes I get each day pretty much the same as before?
Junk faxes have been illegal for years. When you get them, you file a complaint to the FCC and the sender is looking at a pretty hefty fine per fax. I can’t see how a class action suit can succeed if the practice is so easily stopped.
Wow. Well, I’ve never complained. Does the fine go to the government or me?
And maybe these are not “junk faxes” as they do have something to do with my business. They are unsolicited, and per the lawsuit “do not include an opt-out notice as described in …”.
Also, as I peruse my recent case from Cir. Ct. Cook County, Ill. it looks like we (I) won this already and are just figuring out how to divvy up the cash. The company that did the faxing has offered to settle and has agreed to pay $750,000 into the settlement fund!
Many years ago, I had a fax machine that didn’t pick up automatically. One night, the phone rang at midnight. I picked it up and heard a fax signal, but hung up and went back to sleep (my mistake was hanging up). Every hour it rang again until around 6 I got up and received the fax, which was from a company flogging fax paper. There was no telephone number, just a fax number. I wrote a nasty note and then added 50 pages of discarded mathematics and faxed it back to them. Never heard from them again. Now my fax machine picks up automatically. I have no idea what Canadian law is on the subject.
IIRC it’s actually per page and not only that, the faxes are transferable and worth about $500 a piece in penalties. That means I can take all of my junk faxes and all of yours and his and hers and sue someone.
Years ago I used to sort them by who they came from (you could tell by the headers or lack thereof (illegal btw) because people were always talking about class action lawsuits. None of them ever happened. Now I just toss them.
IIRC, the largest class action lawsuit ever was against fax.com for something like three trillion dollars.
FCC fines to not go to the complaining party, and most people don’t bother to complain, so the practice isn’t stopped that easily. That’s what the lawsuits are for.
The class representatives in a class action suit sometimes receive the same amount as any other members of the class. Usually they’ll get an incentive payment though. It might be as much as ten times the amount of the payout to other class members, depending on how much work they have to do (attend depositions, hearings, etc.)
