Spam Text Suit Against American Eagle Outfitters Says Previous Settlement Left Many Out

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A proposed class action filed in Oklahoma claims American Eagle Outfitters, Inc. and AEO Management Co. violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) when the clothing retailer sent marketing text messages to consumers’ cell phones using automatic dialing technology that can contact randomly dialed numbers en masse. The 20-page complaint comes with some baggage, however, namely that its filing stems from a previous case against American Eagle (Melito, et al. v. American Eagle Outfitters, Inc., et al.) for which, the lawsuit says, “the settlement class … was narrowed to a secret list of 618,301 persons filed under seal.”

The plaintiff in this lawsuit says that when Melito was settled, the parties involved redefined the class to arbitrarily limit membership to a list provided by American Eagle Outfitters. As a result, the plaintiff argues, many individuals who supposedly received TCPA-violating spam text messages from American Eagle Outfitters were not included in the defendants’ class list and therefore excluded from the settlement. In fact, despite the submission of more than 100,000 claims forms, the lawsuit says the Melito settlement administrator identified only 38,141 claims as valid. 

Given that the Melito decision allowed for anyone not included in that class list to file their own lawsuit, the October 30 complaint claims the spam texts sent by the defendants prompted recipients to visit several websites owned, maintained and/or operated by American Eagle Outfitters. The plaintiff claims she never provided prior express consent to receive texts from the defendants on her cell phone.