Woman Awarded $112,500 From DirecTV for Harassing Phone Calls

If you’ve ever had dinnertime or your favorite television show interrupted by one of those annoying unsolicited telephone sales calls and wished you could do something about it, take some pointers from Virginia Calhoun.

A judge recently awarded the Texas woman more than $112,500 in damages from DirecTV after the satellite television company was found to have placed countless unwanted telephone solicitations with prerecorded messages attempting to sell her the company’s service, according to a report in the Southeast Texas Record.

Calhoun sued the company in February 2009 claiming the solicitations violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which prohibits residential telephone calls by artificial or prerecorded messages without prior consent unless the call is for emergency purposes.

Her lawsuit claimed the unwanted sales calls had continued despite her repeated pleas for them to stop. When DirecTV failed to respond to her suit filed in the Marshall Division of the Eastern District of Texas, U.S. District Judge T. John Ward entered a default judgment in her favor, according to the Record.

The judge then ordered DirecTV to pay Calhoun the damages plus $415 for her out-of-pocket court costs.

For its part, DirecTV said it “takes its obligations under the TCPA very seriously and complies with the national Do Not Call list as well as requests to be placed on our internal Do Not Call list.” The company also said it does not send automated messages to persons with whom it does not have a business relationship.

DirecTV blamed the whole situation with Calhoun on “unscrupulous third parties” who made the calls and mislead her into thinking the calls were placed by DirecTV.

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