Last month, a federal court ruling found Dish Network liable for $61 million in trebled damages for its service provider’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) violations. The provider, Satellite Systems Network (SSN), had been violating the TCPA for years while Dish Network (Dish) knowingly looked the other way.
Between 2004 and 2010, Dish received and ignored multiple complaints from consumers who were receiving calls from SSN despite having registered their numbers on the Do-Not-Call (DNC) Registry. During the trial, which commenced earlier this year in January, it was discovered that SSN initiated more than 50,000 calls to about 18,000 consumers whose phone numbers appeared on the National DNC Registry. The court found that Dish knew that SSN had a history of making telemarketing calls without first checking if the recipient was on the DNC list, yet still allowed the vendor to make calls on its behalf.
