Robocall Lawyer in Georgia: $500 to $1,500 Per Illegal Call

The federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) is the law that pays Georgians for illegal calls. It bars autodialed and prerecorded calls and texts to a cell phone without consent and bars telemarketing to numbers on the Do Not Call Registry. Each violation is worth $500, and up to $1,500 when willful. The damages are per call, so a campaign that rings you a few times a week for a season is a real claim.

Georgia’s statute, O.C.G.A. § 46-5-27, started life as a state no-call law administered by the Public Service Commission. The statute directs the commission to incorporate the Georgia portion of the national registry into the state database, and in 2003 the state merged its list into the federal one; the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division says the national registry maintained by the FTC is now the sole registration site for Georgians. The statute still does work of its own. It requires a solicitor to state clearly who is calling at the beginning of the call and bars blocking or circumventing your caller identification service. It gives the Attorney General authority to issue cease and desist orders and civil penalties. And under subsection (i) it gives a resident who receives more than one violating solicitation from the same caller within 12 months a private action for actual monetary loss or statutory damages for each knowing violation, whichever is greater, plus attorney’s fees. Georgia sets no calling window of its own, so the federal 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. rule applies. In a Georgia case the state claim can sometimes be added; the TCPA stays the larger engine at $500 to $1,500 per call.

TCPA cases for Georgia residents are filed in the Northern District of Georgia, which sits in Atlanta and covers Gainesville and Rome; the Middle District, covering Macon, Columbus, Athens and Albany; or the Southern District, covering Savannah, Augusta and Brunswick. Spoofed 404, 470, 678 and 770 numbers are a standard trick for making an out-of-state call center look like metro Atlanta, and 912 spoofs do the same on the coast. Auto-warranty recordings and wrong-number robocalls to reassigned numbers are the patterns Georgians describe most often.

Cases are handled nationwide under the federal TCPA. Local counsel is associated where Georgia rules require it. Max Morgan, Esq. is licensed in Pennsylvania and represents consumers across the country under this federal law. Your call log is reviewed free, and there is no attorney’s fee unless you recover.