Time Warner Cable must pay $229,500 to woman it wouldn't stop calling

After placing 153 automated calls to a Texas woman in less than a year, Time Warner Cable has been ordered to pay $1,500 for each one, including 74 that were placed after Araceli King sued the company.

King accused Time Warner Cable of harassing her by leaving messages for Luiz Perez, the man who had the number before her, Reuters reports. The "interactive voice response" system calls customers who owe money, and King said during a seven-minute conversation, she told a representative she was not Perez. Time Warner Cable argued it was not liable under the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which limits robo-calls, by saying the company thought it is was reaching Perez, who agreed to the calls.


U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled Tuesday that Time Warner Cable owed $229,500 in damages, saying a "responsible business" would have done more to find Perez. "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. Those final 74 calls were "particularly egregious violations of the TCPA and indicate that TWC simply did not take this lawsuit seriously."

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