Is There New Hope For Challenging Aggregated Statutory Damages?

Congress and state legislatures have enacted many statutes that provide for minimum statutory damages recoveries that are far in excess of the actual damages most individuals will suffer. A prominent example is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which offers $500 per violation of the statute, trebled to $1500 for willful violations. The idea is that offering such damages will create incentives for individual plaintiffs to pursue such claims in court when actual damages are minimal or difficult to measure. But the numbers can quickly add up when such statutory damages claims are aggregated as part of a putative class action. By the simple expedient of cutting and pasting standard class allegations into their complaints, plaintiffs' lawyers can transform a $500 claim into one for $500 million. (For fans of the Austin Powers movies: Insert Dr. Evil impression here (or take a look at this clip).)