Caremark Beats Bid to Revive Suit Over Unsolicited Ad Faxes

CaremarkPCS Health LLC and Welltok Inc. don’t have to face a lawsuit over allegedly unsolicited fax advertisements because the allegedly offending communications lacked a commercial component.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act “doesn’t bar the unsolicited sending of faxes that lack commercial components,” Judge Raymond W. Gruender said for the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Gruender rejected the argument by plaintiff BPP—a periodontal care provider in the St. Louis area—that any fax that gives public notice of a commercial good or service is an “unsolicited advertisement.”

In order to be an advertisement under the TCAP, the fax “must ...