A lawsuit titled Charvat v. Carnival et. al. claims that Norwegian Cruise Lines, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and Carnival Cruise Lines gave Resort Marketing Group permission to make recorded “robocalls” offering free cruises. These calls, made between July 2009 and March 2014, violated the TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act). This law places restrictions on telemarketers.
The settlement sets up a fund to pay people who received the calls during the specific time period of July 2009 and March 2014. Each call could be worth $300. The maximum that can be claimed per phone number is $900. You can check your phone number to confirm you are a member of the class and file a claim at https://www.rmgtcpasettlement.com/Home.aspx. The “File A Claim” button takes you to a page that lets you input your phone number to see if your number is listed as one that was affected. There is also a button that lets you file your claim online, or you can print out the proper form and mail it in. The deadline to file claims is November 3, 2017. Any claim postmarked or received after the deadline may not receive any settlement funds, even if the phone number was listed by Resort Marketing Group as a number that was on the calling list. The site also gives information about what procedure to follow if someone with an affected number wants to be left out of the settlement and pursue other remedies on their own.
Possible claims like this are very important to mention when someone is considering filing for bankruptcy. When someone files for relief under the bankruptcy laws, there is a duty to disclose all assets of the applicant at the time the case is filed with the court. This duty covers things like cash a person has on the date the case is filed, shares of stock owned, vehicles owned, real estate they own anywhere in the world, and all the things we normally think of as our property. It also includes things that we may not think about every day, like the right to make a claim. The court considers the ability to make a claim against another entity an asset just like the cash in our pocket. This duty to disclose includes possible claims based on any event that happened prior to the case filing. This duty also includes claims that you find out about after your case is filed, but the event that created the claim happened before the case is filed. It is very important to remain in touch with your bankruptcy attorney, so new information like the type of claim mentioned above can be discussed and properly disclosed to the court. In most cases, the disclosure simply means sending additional information to the court in the form of an amendment to an already filed case and stating what law allows you to keep the proceeds from the claim whenever they come. Failing to disclose information like this to the court can result in the court taking whatever you were entitled to receive based on the claim, even if you could have protected it if you had just told the court about it.
In summary, disclosure of this specific claim and all claims is necessary in a bankruptcy case; the consequences of the failure to disclose can be severe. Communication with your bankruptcy counsel is essential to making sure you don’t violate any rules by mistake and suffer these kinds of consequences.