| Volume 143 Number 52 |
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The People’s Lawyer’s Tip of the Day
If you don’t have the cash or credit to cover a financial emergency, you might be thinking about getting a payday loan. But some payday lenders are not honest about how they collect on those loans and take more payments than they said they would. Click here for more.
Hertz files for bankruptcy protection
Hertz, which even its closest rival once acknowledged as the number one rental car firm, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a Delaware court.
The company said the sudden impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) on the travel business had caused a big drop in company revenue and bookings. Click here for more.
Your Money
Your Social Security payment amount is determined by how much you earn while working and when you elect to start receiving payments. Married individuals are additionally eligible for spousal and survivor's payments. But there are many strategies you can use to increase how much you will receive in retirement. Here's how to get the highest Social Security payment you qualify for. Click here for more.
For the Lawyers
Market survey solicitations can violate TCPA. A divided Third Circuit panel ruled that unwanted faxes soliciting to buy products or services, rather than to sell them, could be considered violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. A three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that faxes seeking out doctors to participate in market research surveys in exchange for monetary compensation should be considered unwanted solicitations because they were clearly commercial in nature even if they weren't offering anything for sale. The court stated, "We do not doubt that a recipient of a fax offering to buy goods or services from the recipient would consider the fax to be an advertisement….” "After all, a fax attempting to buy goods or services is no less commercial than a fax attempting to sell goods or services." In a dissenting opinion, however, Judge Kent Jordan said he believed the majority's opinion added words to the statute that simply weren't there. He pointed to language in the TCPA defining advertisement as "material advertising the commercial availability or quality of any property, goods or services." Richard Fischbein v. Olson Research Group Inc. et al., case number 19-3018, and Robert Mauthe v. ITG Inc. et al., case number 19-3222, both before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Click here for more.