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 Time Warner Cable Inc must pay the insurance claims specialist
$229,500 for placing 153 automated calls meant for someone else to
her cellphone in less than a year, even after she told it to stop, a
Manhattan federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
King, of Irving, Texas, accused Time Warner Cable of harassing her
by leaving messages for Luiz Perez, who once held her cellphone
number, even after she made clear who she was in a seven-minute
discussion with a company representative.
The calls were made through an "interactive voice response" system
meant for customers who were late paying bills.
Time Warner Cable countered that it was not liable to King under the
federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act, a law meant to curb
robocall and telemarketing abuses, because it believed it was
calling Perez, who had consented to the calls.
 But in awarding triple damages of $1,500 per call for willfully
violating that law, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said "a
responsible business" would have tried harder to find Perez and
address the problem.
He also said 74 of the calls had been placed after King sued in
March 2014, and that it was "incredible" to believe Time Warner
Cable when it said it still did not know she objected.
"Defendant harassed plaintiff with robo-calls until she had to
resort to a lawsuit to make the calls stop, and even then TWC could
not be bothered to update the information in its IVR system,"
Hellerstein wrote.
The last 74 calls, he added, were "particularly egregious violations
of the TCPA and indicate that TWC simply did not take this lawsuit
seriously."
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A trial had been scheduled for July 27. Time Warner Cable
spokeswoman Susan Leepson said the New York-based company is
reviewing the decision.
"Companies are using computers to dial phone numbers," King's lawyer
Sergei Lemberg said in a phone interview. "They benefit from
efficiency, but there is a cost when they make people's lives
miserable. This was one such case."
Charter Communications Inc agreed in May to buy Time Warner Cable
for $56 billion. The merger has yet to close.
The case is King v Time Warner Cable, U.S. District Court, Southern
District of New York, No. 14-02018.
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