Burger King Sued Over Spam
Burger King has been made the subject of a class action law suit over spam. Not the state meat-product of Hawaii, but annoying text messages.
Elizabeth Espinal is suing Burger King after receiving text messages urging her to try BK’s Loaded Steakhouse Burger and the Mocha BK Joe Iced Coffee. Espinal is claiming she received actual harm from the harassment. So how many times did Burger King text her?
Three.
BK sent Espinal three texts over a 16 month period from April 2008 to August 2009, charging literally pennies to her cell phone bill. Espinal went through the arduous task of texting “Stop” back as a reply to the first message and then made no other attempts to get BK to end it’s once-every-five-month messaging.
And now she is suing BK for a whopping $5 million. That’s 1.6 million dollars per text message.
Espinal’s suit contends that the King violated violated Section 47 of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits unsolicited voice and text calls to cellular phones. But, odds are she gave them not just her phone number but permission to send her messages, probably some online click-through agreement. The real meat of the case will come down to whether her single request of “Stop.” is enough to invalidate any previous agreement to receive text messages.
[Earlier: Man sues over exploding McDonald's chicken sandwich, and Blimpie is sued over not having enough meat (because lawyers really just suck at math)]
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when the King propositioned his meat and was shot down he obviously understood “No” means “No” and changed his offer to a mocha – the plaintiffs failure to rebuff the mocha was then resonably interpreted as implied consent to further solicitations …….i’ve been doing defense for too long
In my country, you must be very careful with the meat you eat. It must be cooked quickly, as there is not a government inspector as the USA has. Often food is left out without refrigeration, and it is not healthy to eat old meat.
For this reason, my family always insists on inspecting the live animal before ordering it to be butchered and delivered with ice to our compound.