Litigious consumer hits mortgage industry with new TCPA suit

An irate recipient of unwanted texts and calls is targeting mortgage companies behind some of them with a second lawsuit in as many months.

In a late December class action suit filed in a Wisconsin federal court, plaintiff Chet Michael Wilson alleged Fairway Independent Mortgage Corp. called and sent multiple text messages after he had already placed his phone number on the national Do Not Call Registry. 

Wilson also claimed he was not the intended recipient of the correspondence in question. In copies of texts sent in February 2022 that were included in the filing, a loan officer representing Fairway addressed a message to "Eric" and then attempted to follow-up two more times in little more than 30 minutes. 

In his reply to the loan officer, Wilson indicated he had never expressed interest in a mortgage nor contacted Fairway. 

Representing the proposed class, Wilson said Fairway, which is headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin, violated provisions of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by telemarketing to a number on the do-not-call list more than 31 days after it was first registered. Businesses fall into noncompliance once they make any sales calls or texts to phone numbers on the registry.  

The defendant routinely failed to comply with the TCPA "by delivering, or causing to be delivered, more than one advertisement or marketing text message to residential or cellular telephone numbers without prior express invitation or permission required," the lawsuit stated. 

In his request for a jury trial, the plaintiff seeks to represent a class consisting of consumers with numbers on the do-not-call registry and who did not give out contact information to Fairway but still received more than one message from the lender in a 12-month period. The contact needed to have occurred in the four years prior to lawsuit filing. 

The suit also asks for monetary damages, with amounts not disclosed, to be granted to the class. Fairway declined to comment on the plaintiff's charges.

The complaint is the second class action lawsuit lodged by Wilson against a mortgage company in the latter months of 2024. In November, Wilson lobbed a similar allegation against Mr. Cooper after receiving unwanted calls, claiming TCPA violations through the use of pre-recorded or artificial intelligence generated correspondence. Wilson has also gone to court with various other financial services businesses in late 2024 over alleged TCPA infractions. 

As in the Fairway case, Wilson claimed Mr. Cooper delivered the messages to the wrong recipient, as the call referred to loans he did not hold, and he had never been a client of the servicing giant.    

The latest developments point to the potential legal headache mortgage businesses face with any alleged violation of the TCPA, underscoring rules that mandate companies must vet all numbers before making sales-related outreach. Various lenders have faced similar class action suits in recent years, with Cardinal Financial settling one such case in 2023 for $7 million. 

The late 2024 lawsuits come months before new rules governing robocalls are scheduled to be introduced. The update to the TCPA aims to make it easier for consumers to opt out or curb the number of robocalls they receive.