FOSTER CITY, Calif., April 18 /PRNewswire/ -- A federal lawsuit alleging
violations of federal and California anti-spam email laws was filed today in
U.S. District Court, Northern District, in San Francisco against
Illinois-based Kraft Foods, Inc. (NYSE: KFT) and its New Jersey-based
subsidiary Victor Th. Engwall & Co., for using illegal spam to advertise
Gevalia coffee.
The complaint demands a jury trial and seeks statutory and liquidated
damages that could exceed $11.7 million.
Bay Area Attorney John L. Fallat filed the suit on behalf of client
Hypertouch, Inc., a small Internet service provider (ISP) in Foster City,
Calif., for flooding the ISP's customers with more than 8500 unsolicited and
unwanted email advertisements for Gevalia. "This lawsuit is a strong warning
to companies that they will still be held accountable even if they pay someone
else to do their spamming," says Fallat.
"Despite ongoing complaints, Gevalia has been using illegal spam since
2001," said Hypertouch president and founder Joe Wagner. "Gevalia routinely
uses some of the most notorious spammers in the business." The suit alleges
that the defendants and/or their agents send spam email advertisements with
fraudulent and misleading headers, often to randomly generated and harvested
email addresses. "Gevalia's spam is even specially tailored for different
targets," Wagner continued. "In January 2005, Microsoft Hotmail users received
Gevalia spam that had hidden text copied from the web pages of ABCNews.com to
get around spam filters."
"Gevalia provides a perfect example of the deep flaws federal CAN-SPAM
Act," Wagner said. "CAN-SPAM put the onus on the public to do what you should
never do -- attempt to 'opt-out' of spam. We submitted a brand new, never used
email address to Gevalia's opt-out link as a test. Sure enough, that email
address, given only to Gevalia, started getting daily spam for all kinds of
products and services."
"If submitting email addresses to Kraft's Gevalia is demonstrably a bad
idea, imagine the peril in submitting addresses directly to the spammers they
hire," Fallat added. "The aptly named CAN-SPAM Act should be rewritten so that
it supports strong anti-spam laws like California's instead of deliberately
weakening them."
Anyone who has information about the email marketing and/or business
practices of Kraft or Victor Th. Engwall & Co (a.k.a. Gevalia) is invited to
contact attorney John Fallat at 415-457-3773 or email him at
jfallat@fallat.com. Full details and ongoing updates are available at
http://legal.hypertouch.com .
SOURCE John L. Fallat
 back to top
Related links:
http://legal.hypertouch.com
CONTACT:
John Fallat, +1-415-457-3773
NOTE TO EDITORS: Docket # C0501589 - Judge is Phyllis J.
Hamilton/First hearing, Aug. 18 -- 2:30 p.m.
|
