While the real estate industry waits for the latest developments in the National Association of Realtors‘ various anti-trust lawsuits, Anywhere is preparing for its own day in court.
The real estate conglomerate had its request for reconsideration of a class certification ruling in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action lawsuit denied “for lack of good cause under Civil Local Rule 7-9,” according to court documents filed last Thursday. Anywhere filed the motion in late March.
After losing its bid for a summary judgement, Anywhere is headed to trial in November with a pretrial conference set for November 10 and the trial set to begin on November 22. If held responsible, Anywhere could be facing a fine of at least $225 million.
The class action suit was filed in 2019 in a U.S. District Court in Northern California and centers on an alleged TCPA violation. In the suit, plaintiffs contend they received unwanted, autodialed calls from Coldwell Banker and NRT agents, despite being on the National Do Not Call Registry.
“Companies like Defendant flagrantly ignores the Registry and invade the privacy of consumers with unwanted calls,” the suit states.
Three separate classes have been certified in the suit. The first class, deemed the “National Do Not Call Registry Nationwide” class, consists of all persons in the U.S. “who received two or more calls made by a [Defendant]-affiliated agent using a Mojo, PhoneBurner, and/or Storm dialer in any 12-month period on a residential landline or cell phone number that appeared on the National Do Not Call Registry for at least 31 days for the time period beginning June 11, 2015, to present.”
The second class, known as the “National Internal Do Not Call” class, is made up of anyone in the U.S. “who received, in any 12-month period, two or more calls promoting [Defendant’s] services and made by a [Defendant]-affiliated agent to their residential landline or cell phone number, for the time period beginning June 11, 2015, to present.”
The final class, termed the “National Artificial or Prerecorded Message” class, includes anyone in the U.S. who received a call on their residential telephone line or cell phone number with an artificial or prerecorded message.
In total, the classes include more than 445,000 unique cellphone numbers.
Requests for comment sent to lawyers for both the plaintiffs and Anywhere were not immediately returned.
