One of the largest residential mortgage lenders in the U.S., United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM), is facing a class action lawsuit over claims of potentially illegal telemarketing practices.
Court documents filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado presented the plaintiff’s grievances as indicative of “widespread public outrage about the proliferation of intrusive, nuisance telemarketing practices.”
Bridget Warne, a resident of Peyton, Colo., alleges that UWM “and/or third parties acting on its behalf” violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) by bombarding her residential telephone number “without prior express invitation or permission” and despite her number being listed on the National Do Not Call Registry.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) created the Do Not Call Registry to allow consumers to formally decline having their telephone numbers solicited, which “must be honored indefinitely, or until the registration is cancelled by the consumer or the telephone number is removed by the database administrator,” court documents say.
Warne says she received more than 50 calls in a span of less than three months, and claims that after escalating the issue with UWM directly, the company ignored her requests to cease calling.
The proliferative nature of these alleged “robocalls” prompted Warner to pursue a class designation for her case “because telemarketing campaigns generally place calls to thousands or even millions of potential customers en masse,” the complaint states. People who receive more than one call “by or on behalf of the same entity” within any 12-month period in violation of TCPA regulations can bring a private cause of action.
The FCC has also ruled that a company shares liability for illegal telemarketing practices even if contracting out those services, potentially implicating UWM if the alleged third-party robocalls are found to have occurred.
Injunctions against future calls and $500 in damages for each violation have been proposed by Warne’s attorneys if the action proves successful.
UWM had not responded to a request for comment by the time of publication.
