Health One Medical Center v. Mohawk
KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judge. Some questions seem to arise only in class-action lawsuits. Here, a seller of prescription drugs sent junk faxes to various medical providers, advertising the seller's prices on various drugs. The question presented is whether - for purposes of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which makes it unlawful "to send . . . an unsolicited advertisement" to a fax machine - the manufac- turers of those drugs "sent" those faxes even though they knew nothing about them. The district court answered no, and so do we.
FAX machines - the ubiquitous replacement for the formerly ubiquitous TELEX or TWX machine - are so important to some businesses that the FCC dictated that VoIP services must include the ability to handle FAX calls in their devices.
Here we have a "victory" for big pharma, where an appeals court decided that two major players aren't liable for unsolicieted advertisements because they didn't 'send' them. However, it concerns me, for the obvious reason: it's a short step from "Don't send unsolicited fax messages" to "Don't get caught hinting that your distributors can do it for you."
Bill Horne Moderator