Class Action Alleges Marketer Is At Least Vicariously Liable for TCPA Wrongdoing

HomeAdvisor’s business is to connect consumers with various home project services, and it promotes itself through telemarketing text messages placed directly to consumers, often in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, alleged Kimberly Hudson’s class action Monday (docket 1:24-cv-01408) in U.S. District Court for Colorado in Denver. Her case “is about stopping incessant telemarketers” like HomeAdvisor from sending unwanted text messages to the cellphones of Hudson “and likely thousands of other persons,” said the complaint. The Texas resident personally listed her cellphone number on the national do not call registry in October 2009, yet HomeAdvisor began sending her telemarketing text messages in January 2023 that haven’t stopped, it said. The defendant controlled or had the right to control the marketing activities of any potential third party, it said. The company “is not permitted under the law to outsource and contract its way out of liability by directing and benefiting from its agents’ TCPA violations,” it said. If HomeAdvisor directly sent the text messages, it's “directly liable” for any TCPA violations, it said. To the extent any text messages were made by a third party acting on HomeAdvisor’s behalf, the defendant “is vicariously liable for those unlawful text messages,” it said.