in Newswire Published on April 14, 2022

Miracle-Gro Facing Class Action Over Alleged Spam Text Message Ads

Galanti v. The Scotts Company, LLC

Filed: April 11, 2022 ◆§ 0:22-cv-60708

Miracle-Gro faces a lawsuit over its alleged practice of sending unsolicited telemarketing text messages to consumers who never consented to receive them.

Defendant(s)

The Scotts Company LLC Miracle-Gro

Law(s)

Telephone Consumer Protection Act Florida Telephone Solicitation Act

State(s)

Florida

The Scotts Company, who does business as Miracle-Gro, has been hit with a proposed class action over its alleged practice of sending unsolicited telemarketing text messages to consumers who never consented to receive them.

The 23-page case claims that the lawn and garden company has run afoul of the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and Florida Telephone Solicitation Act (FTSA), which both require companies to secure a consumer’s express written consent before sending certain types of automated messages.

The plaintiff, a Broward County, Florida resident, says she received the following telemarketing texts, and eventually more, from Miracle-Gro beginning in February 2022:

According to the case, the purpose of the messages was to encourage the plaintiff to purchase Miracle-Gro products or services.

The plaintiff says her phone number had been listed on the National Do Not Call Registry for at least 30 days at the time she received the defendant’s first text message. Per the suit, the plaintiff never had a business relationship with Miracle-Gro or made “any type of inquiry” to the company.

The lawsuit contends that Miracle-Gro erred by failing to provide instructions within the messages for how to opt out of receiving them, which is a standard industry requirement.

Per the suit, Miracle-Gro’s failure to provide opt-out instructions illustrates that the company neither maintains written policies and procedures regarding its text message marketing, provides training to its employees engaged in telemarketing, nor maintains an internal do-not-call list. As a result, consumers who received the messages were harmed in that they “had no idea how to and were unable to stop” the company’s texts, the lawsuit alleges.

Moreover, Miracle-Gro’s use of the short code 76848 to send the messages indicates that the company used automated technology to distribute the messages without human intervention, the case relays. The suit stresses that prior written consent is required from recipients before a company is permitted to send telemarketing messages using this type of technology.

The lawsuit looks to represent the following classes:

“All persons in the United States who from four years prior to the filing of this action (1) Defendant, or anyone on Defendant’s behalf, (2) placed more than one text message call within any 12-month period; (3) where the person’s telephone number that had been listed on the National Do Not Call Registry for at least thirty days; (4) regarding Defendant’s property, goods, and/or services; (5) who did not purchase or transact business with Defendant during the eighteen months immediately preceding the date of the first message; and (6) who did not contact Defendant during the three months immediately preceding the date of the first message with an inquiry about a product, good, or service offered by Defendant.”

“All persons within the United States who, within the four years prior to the filing of this Complaint through the date of class certification, (1) received two or more text messages within any 12-month period, (2) regarding Defendant’s property, goods, and/or services, (3) to said person’s residential telephone number.”

“All persons in Florida who, (1) were sent a telephonic sales call regarding Defendant’s property, goods, and/or services, (2) using the same equipment or type of equipment utilized to call Plaintiff.”

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