It started more than fifteen years ago: the flurry of lawsuits over unsolicited faxes.
There were simple solutions to the alleged problem. Ask the sender to drop you from his list. Block faxes from him. Turn your machine off when not expecting a fax.
Beginning in 2005 and continuing through 2011, Locklear Electric in Wood River filed at least eight class action lawsuits in Madison and St. Clair Counties over unsolicited faxes.
In 2009, the Mixon Insurance Agency filed a putative class action suit against Taylorville Chiropractic Clinic, charging that the clinic violated the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act by sending unsolicited fax advertisements. Mixon had received one fax from the clinic – two and a half years earlier!
There were at least 39 other companies that might have been similarly abused, and Mixon sought “justice” for all of them.
In 2011, St. Louis attorney Stephen Tillery filed suit against Surrey Vacation Resorts of Branson, claiming the company had violated federal law when it faxed 800,000 ads for its time-share properties in 2003. Having identified only 500 recipients, Tillery still claimed 800,000 violations, with a $500 penalty for each, for a total of $400 million.
One of the last to try to cash in on this faux fax outrage is Belleville chiropractor Robert Meinders. On his behalf in 2014, Chicago attorney Phillip Bock filed a putative class action suit against United Health Care for sending Meinders a fax he didn’t ask for.
Meinders had a professional relationship with United. The company had processed and paid more than 6,000 claims for him. But, then, allegedly, it sent him one fax that he hadn’t asked for, and that frosted him.
As it happens, though, his contract with the company included an arbitration clause. Now, after seven years of litigation that tied up our courts for no reason, the Seventh Circuit Appellate Court has affirmed the lower court’s ruling that Meinders must arbitrate his claim against United.
Which is what he should have done – or not done, for a trivial matter – in the first place.