Papa John's Facing Class Action Over Spam Texts

A multi-million dollar class action suit has been filed against Papa John’s Pizza claiming the chain unlawfully sent customers 500,000 unsolicited promotional text messages in 2010, the L.A. Times is reporting. A few plaintiffs in the $250 million class action claim they received 15 or more consecutive texts at all times of day advertising pizza deals.

“The practice and process of sending UNSOLICITED messages to mobile devices is most likely ILLEGAL.”

Participants in the suit, certified on November 9, are seeking $500 for each unwarranted text message sent in 2010. Attorneys speculate plaintiffs could be awarded as much as $1,500 for every message if it is determined Papa John’s willfully broke the law. One lawyer for the plaintiffs said the class action may yield “one of the largest damages ever recovered under the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act.”

Some of the pizza giant’s franchises are being accused of using marketing company and mass texting service OnTime4U to illegally flood inboxes of people selected from a database of customers who had previously ordered from Papa John’s. After the first text suit against Papa John’s in April 2010, the company disassociated from OnTime4U, who have also been named defendants in the new class action. Papa John’s then reportedly alerted all of its corporate and franchise pizzerias that “the practice and process of sending UNSOLICITED messages to mobile devices is most likely ILLEGAL.” Franchisees were then instructed to reclaim their customer data from OnTime4U.

In 1991, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) was passed to prohibit companies from advertising by way of automated phone equipment without consumers first opting into a service. While first applying to automatic recording devices, fax machines, and prerecorded messages, the TCPA now prohibits solicitation through SMS text messages without consent.

Classaction.com is currently investigating claims of unsolicited text messages nationwide.