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

The federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) is the law that turns a Maine robocall into a claim with a number attached. It bars autodialed or prerecorded calls and texts to a cell phone without your consent, and it bars telemarketing to a number on the Do Not Call Registry. Each call or text is a separate violation worth $500, and up to $1,500 when the caller acted willfully or knowingly. The Maine cases we see most are prerecorded sales calls to a cell phone and wrong-number debt collection calls to a reassigned 207 number.

Maine’s own rules live in Title 10, chapter 225 of the Maine Revised Statutes. Section 1498 is the robocall section. It defines an automated telephone calling device as any system that dials numbers and plays recorded messages, and it prohibits using such a device, or an artificial or prerecorded voice, to make solicitation calls to any cellular phone, any residential number, any unlisted or toll-free number, or any emergency number in the state. Where an exception allows an automated solicitation call, the statute still limits it to weekdays between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., one call per number in any eight-hour period, with the caller identifying its name, address, and phone number in the first minute. Section 1499-B is the do-not-call section. The Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division maintains the Maine registry, the national registry may serve as that registry, and it is a violation to place a telephone sales call to a consumer whose number has been on the national or state registry for at least three months. A 2023 amendment added a duty to check the FCC’s reassigned numbers database, which is aimed squarely at wrong-number calls.

Enforcement of chapter 225 belongs to the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division in Augusta, which also takes consumer complaints. Your own TCPA suit is a separate track and is normally filed in the United States District Court for the District of Maine, which sits in Portland and Bangor and covers the whole state. Maine state-law counts can sometimes be added to the federal complaint, and Maine’s flat ban on prerecorded solicitation calls to cell phones lines up closely with the TCPA, so a caller who broke one usually broke both. The TCPA remains the engine because it pays per call.

Max Morgan, Esq. of The Weitz Firm reviews call records for Maine residents at no charge. Cases are handled nationwide under the federal TCPA. Local counsel is associated where Maine rules require it. You pay no fee unless you recover. The federal TCPA limitations period is generally four years, but each call has its own date, so talk to us before assuming there is time.