Jan Konopca’s reign of Telephone Consumer Protection Act terror against companies has come to an end. For now, at least.
Konopca’s lawyer announced in December that his client had reached a settlement with FDS Bank over alleged violations of the TCPA, the 31st such time that Konopca had made such a claim against an organization. The previous 30 cases netted Konopca about $800,000, according to a letter from FDS Bank.
Konopca started filing his lawsuits in 2010. He admits to owning three cell phones, the number for one of them having been tied to a landline before being ported to the mobile phone. The reason that he ported the landline to a mobile phone? Because squirrels were chewing through the landline wires.
A District Court judge has even come out and said that it was “most probable” that Konopca was making up the actual harm he suffered in order to be able to file the lawsuits, but nothing was able to stop him from doing so.
One lawyer said that TCPA lawsuits can be “as annoying” as the unwanted calls the law was mean to eliminate.
“Everyone in America knows that the TCPA isn’t stopping unwanted calls,” Jeffrey S. Jacobson, partner and co-chair with Kelley Drye & Warren’s class action group in New York, said in a published report.
