Story Archive

Incomplete Revenge

After Colorado passed a law allowing consumers to register their telephone numbers on a “no call” list that telemarketers have to respect, David Hakala of Denver was one of the first to sign up. He also was the first to sue a company that called him after the ban went into effect. Hakala’s legal strategy was clever: the law allows citizens to sue for $500 from anyone who “makes or causes to be made” a phone solicitation, so he sued the actual caller, three company officials who approved the call, and the corporate entity itself, then added court costs for a total of $2,650. “I had them cold,” Hakala says after receiving a settlement from a Boulder financial firm. However, angry members of the no call list discovered a loophole in the law when they were awakened by a late-evening recorded phone message from U.S. Senate candidate Tom Strickland asking for votes. “The law is very clear on the exception for political candidates,” insisted Strickland’s campaign manager, refusing to pledge not to continue such calls. (RC/Denver Rocky Mountain News, Denver Post) ...Which makes it official: politicians are lower in respectability than telemarketers.