Sterling Jewelers Unlawful Cell Phone Call Recording California Class Action

According to the complaint for this class action, plaintiff Yvonne Madrid received a call from Sterling Jewelers on her cell phone on April 13, 2017. The complaint alleges that at no point did the company representative announce that the call was being recorded or ask Madrid if she consented to the recording. Yet at the end of the call, when Madrid asked if the call had been recorded, the complaint alleges that Sterling’s representative said, “Yes.”

The class for this action is all persons in California whose cell phone conversations were recorded, without their knowledge or consent, by Sterling Jewelers or its agents, between August 24, 2016 and August 24, 2017.

California is protective of its citizens’ privacy. The California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) was passed to replace older laws that permitted the recording of a telephone conversation as long as one party consented to the recording. Additions were made to the law in 1992, because of the increasing use of cordless or cell phones. CIPA forbids the recording of all conversations involving cordless or cell phones, whether the conversations are confidential or not.

The California Penal Code § 632.7(a) states this very clearly: “Every person who, without the consent of all parties to a communication, intercepts or receives and intentionally records, or assists in the interception or reception and intentional recordation of, a communication transmitted between two cellular radio telephones, a cellular radio telephone and a landline telephone, two cordless telephones, a cordless telephone and a landline telephone, or a cordless telephone and a cellular radio telephone [violates this section]”.

The complaint alleges that Sterling recorded the conversation with Madrid and another conversation with her, also on her cell phone, on the same day. Because Madrid was not told that the conversation was being recorded, and because she did not give her consent to a recording, the complaint alleges that both recordings were made in violation of CIPA. Although the complaint presents no evidence that the second call was recorded, it states that it believes that Sterling records all its outbound calls.

The California Penal Code permits statutory damages of $5,000 for each violation of the recording prohibition. The class action seeks this plus attorneys’ fees for Madrid, “special, general, compensatory, and punitive damages”, and injunctive relief, prohibiting Sterling from engaging in the same conduct in the future.

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer
Tags: Recording Calls Without Consent