Anywhere settles Telephone Consumer Protection Act complaint
After more than five years of back and forth, Everywhere and the plaintiffs in the Bumpus Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) lawsuit have finally reached a proposed settlement.
According to a notice filed last week and entered into the court docket on Thursday, the parties have reached an “in-principle collective settlement” and are “working to finalize a fully integrated settlement agreement.”
The class action lawsuit was filed in 2019 in a U.S. District Court in Northern California. In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs allege that they received unwanted autodialed calls from Coldwell banker And NRT agents, despite being on the National Do Not Call Register.
“Companies like Defendant blatantly ignore the registry and violate consumer privacy with unwanted calls,” the complaint said.
In February 2022, the plaintiffs and Anywhere each filed a motion for summary judgment in their respective favors. Judge James Donato, who is overseeing the case, rejected both motions in May 2022.
“As the parties’ own motions amply demonstrate, this case is fraught with disputes over material facts that a jury will have to resolve,” Donato wrote in his ruling. “Each side has filed hundreds of pages of briefs, statements and exhibits with their motions.
“While volume alone is not necessarily fatal to summary judgment, these documents reflect an almost total disagreement between the parties on the facts of the case.”
Three separate classes were certified for the suit. In total they include more than 445,000 unique mobile phone numbers. As a result, Anywhere would have been looking at a minimum exposure of more than $220 million if the lawsuit went to trial.
This is what a spokesperson for Anywhere says HousingWire that the company is “pleased that a settlement agreement has been reached.” While we cannot release further details at this time, the settlement is consistent with our financial planning.”
Anywhere isn’t the only brokerage to face allegations of TCPA violations. In April, Keller Williams was named in a TCPA lawsuit in a U.S. District Court in Texas.
