| Volume 143 Number 21 |
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The People’s Lawyer’s Tip of the Day
Many of us don’t have experience planning a funeral. When it’s time to make arrangements, we might ask friends and neighbors for information about local providers. Or ask family members to help shop and sort through the choices. Many of us do research online. You may not realize it, but the FTC Funeral Rule is also here to help. Click here for more.
Voice cloning could make the grandparent scam more dangerous
Thanks to technology, you can’t always believe what you hear. That friend or family member you think you’re talking to may actually be a scammer. In a warning to consumers, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody said voice cloning technology now makes it possible to make near-perfect reproductions of a real person’s voice. She notes that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has warned consumers that this technology has already been used to extort money. Click here for more.
Your Money
A health savings account is available only to those enrolled in a high-deductible health plan. This account is designed to help cover current and future medical expenses and offers some tax advantages. HSA owners need to decide how much to put in an HSA each month or year. Here are some key guidelines for determining how much to contribute to an HSA: Click here for more.
For the Lawyers
Court affirms $5.7M judgment in junk fax suit. The Seventh Circuit upheld a $5.7 million judgment against a pharmaceutical wholesaler accused of sending junk faxes to a class of medical professionals, saying the wholesaler failed to show adequate evidence that customers consented to receiving the company's advertisements. The faxes at issue were sent to former customers of AllScripts, an electronic health care record system vendor that A-S Medication purchased in 2009 in a full asset sale. A-S argued that customers' consent to receive faxes transferred over with everything else in the purchase, but a three-judge panel disagreed. The panel found that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act must be construed liberally in favor of consumer protection. The TCPA bars advertisers from sending ads via fax unless they have an established business relationship or prior express permission or invitation from its recipients, the panel said. "Given those requirements, it would seem odd if a company could solicit express prior permission to send fax advertisements, then transfer that permission to a completely different company who in turn may send advertisements with impunity until the consumer affirmatively terminates its previous permission," the panel said. "Indeed, such a practice could eviscerate the entire statutory scheme which is designed to protect consumers from receiving unwanted contact from unknown entities or individuals." Physicians Healthsource Inc. v. A-S Medication Solutions LLC et al., case number 19-1452, in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Click here for more.