News

Actions

Lawsuit filed over texts offering marijuana for sale

Posted at 2:08 PM, Apr 17, 2019
and last updated 2019-04-17 14:16:32-04

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A lawsuit filed this week by a man in West Michigan accuses a Colorado-based marketing company of violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by repeatedly texting him about marijuana for sale.

The plaintiff in the case, Mr Phillip Rogers, alleges that Rushmore Marketing Group violated the TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) by sending him 37 unsolicited text messages. He claims the text messages were all in regards to purchasing marijuana. Rushmore says on their website that they are a “text messaging platform for businesses.”

The lawsuit, filed this week in the United State District Court for the Western District of Michigan, names two individuals working at Rushmore. It is claimed that they are responsible for texts sent to his phone, saying, “the Marketing Defendants operated together as a common enterprise to run one or more advertising campaigns to market the sale of marijuana to people across the country by sending text messages to cellular telephones, including the sending of multiple unsolicited text messages to Plaintiff’s cellular telephone.”

According to the filing, the situation arose when Rogers bought a new cell phone in August of 2018.  He says that he began receiving text message offers to purchase marijuana within the first month of having the new device. Allegedly, Rogers had to open each message to see the full text received, using prepaid minutes to do so each time.

Examples included in the lawsuit of the messages received

Details of the text messages are laid out in the lawsuit. Many of the messages are purported to be somewhat cryptic in nature, only partially identifying marijuana vendors and the products they were apparently offering for sale.

All of the vendors included in the messages, according to the lawsuit, are based in California.

Damages suffered by Rogers listed in the suit include monetary loss, periodic loss of the use of his phone, annoyance, aggravation and invasion of his privacy.

The lawsuit is asking for between $500 and $1,500 in damages for each text message received.  They are also asking the defendants to stop contacting Mr Rogers.