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 MINNESOTA
MAN ENJOINED FROM PERPETRATING DO-NOT-CALL SCHEME
A federal district court has ordered a Minnesota
man to stop attempting to extract monetary
settlements by threatening to sue for do-not-call
violations. This was the decision in the recent
Minnesota case of Re/Max
Ideal Properties, Inc. v. Swanberg
(Civil No. 06-4843).
Ryan Swanberg of Minnesota has targeted California
REALTORS® and other businesses for monetary
settlements based upon a strained interpretation
of the federal do-not-call rules. In this scheme,
Mr. Swanberg contacts a real estate brokerage
asking to be placed on its do-not-call list and
for a copy of its written do-not-call policy, even
though the brokerage has never contacted him
before. If he does not receive the policy in five
days, he threatens to sue the brokerage for
violating the do-not-call rules, but offers to
settle the matter for about $5,000.
After being targeted by Mr. Swanberg, Re/Max Ideal
Properties, Inc. of Oregon filed a lawsuit
seeking, among other things, for the court to
declare that Mr. Swanberg had no private right of
action under the do-not-call rules, and to
permanently enjoin him from demanding money in
this manner. The court granted this relief through
a default judgment entered against Mr. Swanberg in
March 2007.
Issuance of this injunction is no guarantee that
Mr. Swanberg will stop targeting REALTORS®. To
help REALTORS® comply with the do-not-call rules,
C.A.R. has a legal article entitled Do-Not-Call,
Do-Not-Fax, Do-Not-Email Laws Affecting REALTORS®,
which includes a sample policy for maintaining a
company-specific do-not-call list. Although the
federal do-not-call rules do not specifically
require delivery of a written do-not-call policy
within five days as Mr. Swanberg has demanded, a
prudent broker should, upon anyone's request,
provide a copy of its written policy within a
reasonable time.
C.A.R.'s Legal Department provides REALTORS® with
many other legal articles covering a wide range of
topics of interest. Some of our new or newly
revised legal articles available through C.A.R.
Online
at http://qa.car.org are
as follows:
- Contract
Law and Real Estate Transactions.
- Exemptions
form the Transfer Disclosure Statement (TDS and
MHTDS) Law.
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