Robocall Lawsuit: Find Out If Your Calls Are Worth $500 to $1,500 Each

How the TCPA pays you per call

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. 227, is a federal law from 1991. It does something most consumer laws do not: it puts a price on every single violation. You do not have to prove the calls cost you money. The law sets the damages for you.

There are two main ways a call or text breaks the law, and each has its own damages rule.

Ten illegal prerecorded calls can mean $5,000 before any increase for willfulness. That math is why companies that ignore the rules often settle. You have four years from each call to sue under the federal catch-all deadline in 28 U.S.C. 1658(a), so older calls can still count.

One honest caveat up front: the TCPA does not make the company pay your lawyer. Unlike the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, it has no fee-shifting clause. Lawyers who take these cases on contingency are paid out of what you recover, so the case has to be worth enough to justify the work.

The four-step path from annoying calls to a case

1. Document. Write down every call and text: date, time, the number on your screen, and what was said. Screenshot your call history and save voicemails. A notebook works. So does our printable call log on the build-a-case page.
2. Identify. A lawsuit needs a defendant. Robocallers often hide behind spoofed numbers, so the number alone rarely proves who called. Answer once, listen to the pitch, and ask for the company’s legal name, website, and a callback number.
3. Review. Send us what you have. We look at whether you consented, whether your number was on the Do Not Call Registry, whether the calls used a recorded voice, and whether you told them to stop.
4. File. If the case is worth bringing, a demand letter or a lawsuit follows. Federal and state courts can both hear TCPA suits. Our step-by-step guide to suing a telemarketer walks through each stage.

What makes a strong case, and what is not a case

We would rather tell you now that you do not have a case than waste your time. Here is how we sort them.

Usually strong

• Prerecorded or AI-voice sales calls to your cell phone from a company you never gave your number to.
• Repeated sales calls to a number that had been on the Do Not Call Registry for at least 31 days before the calls started.
• A debt collector or lender calling your cell with a recorded message looking for someone else, and still calling after you said it was the wrong number.
• Calls that kept coming after you clearly asked the company to stop.
• A company name you can prove: an email, a website they gave you, a text with their brand, or a recorded voicemail naming them.

Usually not a case, or not yet

• A single call. The Do Not Call rule needs more than one call in 12 months from the same company.
• Calls from a business you signed up with, where you gave written consent and never took it back.
• Political, charity, and survey calls to a number on the Registry. The Registry does not cover them, though other TCPA rules may.
• Live calls from a person who dialed by hand to a number that is not on the Registry. After the Supreme Court’s 2021 decision in Facebook v. Duguid, many of those calls fall outside the autodialer rule.
• Calls where no one can figure out who was behind them. That is not the end of the road, but it means documenting until the caller slips and gives a name.

The calls we hear about most

Most of what people send us falls into a handful of patterns. Extended car warranty pitches, Medicare and health plan offers, solar and home improvement calls, “cardholder services” credit card rate calls, and loan offers are classic telemarketing. Debt collection calls to the wrong person are a separate and often strong category, covered on our page about wrong-number robocalls. Text spam has its own rules, explained in our guide to illegal spam texts.

You can browse every call type, with the rule that applies to each, in the robocall violations library.

Class settlements and unknown callers

Some companies have already been sued in class actions. If you were in the class, you may be able to file a claim without hiring anyone. Class payouts are usually far smaller than an individual case, though. In the Capital One robocall settlement, the court’s 2015 approval opinion put the recovery at $34.60 per claimant. More recent settlements have estimated larger checks, but still well under the $500 per call an individual can seek.

Many TCPA cases end in class settlements, and you may already be a class member without knowing it. Our page on how TCPA class actions work explains when to file a claim and when your own case is worth more. If you have a number but no company name, our guide to identifying who is calling you shows how to find out.

Who writes this site

RobocallLawsuit.com is published by Laurence Banville, Esq., Managing Partner of Banville Law in Tarrytown, New York. He is admitted to practice in New York and the District of Columbia.

He started his career on the other side. From 2009 to 2010 he was an associate at Wilbraham, Lawler & Buba doing insurance-defense products liability work, defending corporations and insurers. That is useful here: TCPA defendants are companies with lawyers and insurers, and he knows how they build a defense. Read his full background and bar admissions.

Banville Law may refer your matter to, or work as co-counsel with, another law firm. You will be told before any referral and may choose other counsel.

What to do next

If you can name the company and you have at least a rough count of the calls, send us your details for a free review. If you only have numbers and no name yet, start keeping a log today and ask the next caller who they work for. Either way, do not agree to anything on the phone and do not give out payment details.