An NHL fan is suing the Pittsburg Penguins over what he thinks are excessive text messages sent by the club as part of a promotional campaign.

Fred Weiss says that he signed up to recieve texts that included special offers on ticket prices, and important developments like trades and breaking news. He says that he began receiving texts in excess of what they said they were going to send when he signed up.

Weiss complained that the team intentionally broke their own rule about the number of texts they would send. The team set a weekly limit of three texts per week. Weiss says he received five on the first week and four on the second.

In a complaint, he says the Penguins violated the Telephone and Consumer Protection Act by overstepping the agreed upon number of text messages. He filed it on May 25th with the Central District of California District Court.

The complaint seeks statutory and punitive damages of an unspecified amount and for the Penguins to stop sending texts to its fans in excess of the agreed limit. He is seeking class action status for the suit, so the Penguins could owe for all the excessive texts they have sent to fans, not just Weiss.

If the Penguins send texts in excess of what they said under contract, they could very well be liable for the data service the consumers had to pay for those texts. This is just one man’s opinion, but a punitive amount seems frivolous in this case, as no significant harm was done. They only exceeded the text limit by three in Weiss’ case. If he didn’t like receiving that many texts all he has to do is unsubscribe. There are other ways of following the news on your favorite team.

He obviously isn’t that big of a fan, anyway. He’s trying to cripple the team financially with a frivolous lawsuit.

[source: Mashable]

The court record can be viewed here.