While it often seems like there are very few things in life on which everyone can agree, there’s at least one sentiment that unites us - spam e-mail is annoying. It clutters up our inboxes and distracts us from identifying important messages. Many of us accept spam e-mail as a fact of life, but one plaintiff, George F. Kleffman, decided that he had received one too many spam emails from Vonage, a local and long distance phone service provider, and decided to try his luck in court.
In March 2007, Kleffman filed a class action alleging that Vonage violated California Business and Professions Code Section 17529.5(a)(2), which makes it unlawful to send commercial e-mail advertisements if the advertisement “contains or is accompanied by falsified, misrepresented, or forged header information.” Vonage had sent Kleffman 11 spam e-mail advertisements using 11 different domain names that did not include the word “Vonage” in the header. Kleffman did not allege that that there was any “falsified” or “forged” content in the header of any of the e-mails and acknowledged that all of the e-mails were fully traceable to Vonage’s marketing agent. The main thrust of Kleffman’s argument was that Vonage’s use of multiple “random” and “nonsensical” domain names -- some examples include “fromycompanysite.com” and “urgrtquirkz.com” -- was a deliberate strategy to conceal the single source of the spam e-mails in order to bypass spam filters. Thus, Kleffman argued that Vonage’s multiple domain strategy amounted to a “misrepresentation” under section 17529.5(a)(2) because the statute permits spam emails sent from multiple domain names only if “they are not deceptive by virtue of their utterly random and nonsensical nature.”
After the federal district court granted Vonage’s motion to dismiss, Kleffman appealed to the Ninth Circuit, which certified to the California Supreme Court the issue of whether Vonage’s sending spam e-mails using multiple domain names for the purpose of bypassing spam filters constitutes “misrepresented” header information under Section 175529.5(a)(2).
In unanimously affirming the district court decision to grant the motion to dismiss, the California Supreme Court concluded that an e-mail with an accurate and traceable domain name, even if it is “random” or “nonsensical,” does not “misrepresent” header information under section 17529.5(a)(2) because it makes no false representation of fact. The Court reasoned that, as a matter of law, “the use of an accurate and traceable domain name in an e-mail could not be reasonably understood to be an implied assertion that the source of that e-mail is different from the source of another e-mail containing a different domain name.” Therefore, there was no misrepresentation as defined by the statute in this case. The court also rejected Kleffman's attempt to expand the definition of “misrepresented” header information to include “deceptive” or “misleading” header information (by analogizing to California B&P Code Section 17200) because the legislative history did not support Kleffman's expansive statutory interpretation.
At bottom, the California Supreme Court conducted a detailed analysis of the specific word of the statute, and refused to go beyond their meaning -- even if it means more spam for our already cluttered inboxes.
- Sean Morris and Chester Choi
