What Companies Can Learn From Dish’s $280M TCPA Penalty

If the court had assessed full statutory damages and penalties for each violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and telemarketing sales rule (TSR) proven by the plaintiffs in a recent case against Dish Network LLC, damages would have exceeded $783 billion ($783,350,422,000 — to be exact).The court had very little difficulty determining that amount violated due process as a penalty “so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense and obviously unreasonable.” Ultimately, the court assessed a penalty that accounted for 20 percent of Dish’s 2016 after-tax profits, $280 million.