The lawsuit, filed last month in San Francisco Superior Court, alleges that Etracks has bombarded Morrison & Foerster's e-mail users in California with thousands of unsolicited email advertisements – i.e. spam.
The lawsuit is based on two California anti-spam statutes. The first statute forbids the use of California-based equipment of an electronic service provider, such as Morrison & Foerster, to transmit unsolicited e-mail advertisements to the service provider's users if the provider's policy prohibits such use of its equipment. Even after receiving formal notice of Morrison & Foerster's policy against spam, Etracks has sent at least 6,500 unsolicited e-mail advertisements to the law firm’s California users.
The complaint also claims that Etracks violated a second statute, which also regulates spam. According to the firm, Etracks failed to include in its e-mail messages a subject line with the legally required characters “ADV:” or “ADV:ADLT” (for adult-oriented email messages). In addition, the lawsuit states that Etracks failed to insert either a toll-free telephone number or a valid return e-mail address in its e-mail messages, which would permit recipients to instruct Etracks to send no further spam. (These additional statutory requirements were upheld by a California appeal court in January.)
Michael Jacobs, who is handling the case for the firm, said: “This spam coupled with other spam is a big problem.”
The firm has asked the court to ban Etracks from sending further spam to its e-mail addresses. The firm is also seeking damages of $50 for each email delivered in violation of the law, up to $25,000 per day.