Papa John's faces class-action suit for alleged barrage of spam texts
A judge from the Western District of Washington Seattle Court approved a class action suit against Papa John's on Friday. The plaintiffs, three people from Washington State, are standing in for thousands of customers claiming that Papa John's and a marketing firm called OnTime4U worked together to send spam texts to customers who hadn't given their consent to be texted with marketing information, violating the US Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991.
The Seattle law firm Heyrich Kalish McGuigan is representing the plaintiffs. It claims Papa John's customers received 500,000 unwanted text messages nationally, and the firm also claims this could cost Papa John's $500 per text message (a bill that would tally up to $250 million). While such a large payout is highly unlikely, a class-action payout may be in the future for the pizza chain.
The order granting a motion for class action says Papa John's LLC worked with OnTime4U and encouraged their individual franchisees to cooperate with the company. OnTime4U then solicited the franchisees for lists of their customers' phone numbers (which most pizza-delivery stores keep for speedy phone-orders). OnTime4U then removed the land-line numbers, and texted promotional messages to the rest.
