Georgia Court Upholds $150K Default Judgment Against T-Mobile

Some court rulings arrive with fireworks. Others arrive with a legal Post-it note that says, in effect, “You missed the deadline, and now this is expensive.” The Georgia Court of Appeals’ decision involving T-Mobile falls into the second category. It is not flashy, but it is sharp, practical, and just a little brutal.

In Georgia Court Upholds $150K Default Judgment Against T-Mobile, the big takeaway is simple: procedural mistakes can cost real money. A lot of it. In this case, the appellate court let a $150,000 default judgment stand against T-Mobile in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or TCPA, lawsuit tied to repeated telemarketing text messages. T-Mobile did score one partial win when the court reversed an injunction, but the damages award stayed put. In litigation terms, that is less “clean escape” and more “you still owe the bill.”

For businesses, marketers, litigators, and consumers tired of unwanted promotional texts, the ruling matters because it sits at the intersection of default judgment, do-not-call compliance, and telemarketing text message law. It also shows how courts continue to treat text messages as serious enough to trigger real exposure when a company allegedly ignores opt-out requests.

What Happened in the Georgia Case?

The case arose from claims by William Persichetti, a T-Mobile subscriber in Georgia, who alleged that T-Mobile repeatedly sent him telemarketing text messages even after he asked the company to stop, even though his number had been placed on the National Do Not Call Registry, and even after prior disputes over similar conduct. According to the case history, Persichetti had already sued T-Mobile before over allegedly unwanted marketing texts. So this was not a “Whoops, wrong number” story. It was a “We have been here before, and somehow here we are again” story.

After T-Mobile was served with the new complaint in May 2024, it failed to answer on time. That set the stage for a default. Persichetti later moved for default judgment and also served discovery, including requests for admission. Those requests became the quiet stars of the case.

At the damages stage, one admission carried particular weight: because T-Mobile did not timely respond, it was deemed to have admitted that it had sent more than 100 telemarketing text messages to Persichetti’s phone number for the purpose of encouraging the purchase of products or services. That is not a small number. That is not “a handful.” That is a parade.

Why the $150,000 Award Survived

Default Changed the Battlefield

Once a defendant defaults, the case changes shape. In Georgia, default generally means the defendant is treated as having admitted the complaint’s material allegations on liability. The remaining fight is usually over damages, especially when the damages are not automatically fixed by contract or simple arithmetic at the outset.

T-Mobile did not challenge the entry of default on liability in the appeal. That mattered. By the time the case reached the Georgia Court of Appeals, the company was mainly arguing about the amount and type of relief awarded, plus whether the trial court should have allowed it to withdraw the admissions that supported the damages calculation.

The appellate court was not persuaded on the money issue. Persichetti’s complaint did not limit the case to just three specific texts quoted as examples. Instead, it sought up to $500 per violation and asked the court to consider treble damages for willful or knowing conduct under the TCPA. That open-ended prayer for statutory damages gave the trial court room to calculate the award based on the evidence presented at the default judgment hearing.

Requests for Admission Did the Heavy Lifting

This is where civil procedure stopped being boring and started being expensive. Requests for admission are not glamorous. They do not make courtroom TV. But when ignored, they can become devastating. In Georgia, an unanswered request for admission is deemed admitted. And once admitted, the matter is generally treated as conclusively established unless the court allows withdrawal.

That is exactly what happened here. Because T-Mobile failed to respond on time, the court treated the relevant admission as established. The result was a record supporting 100 telemarketing texts. Persichetti then sought $50,000 in base statutory damages at $500 per message, and the court trebled that figure to $150,000 after finding the conduct willful and knowing.

That math may be simple, but the lesson is not soft. Discovery deadlines are not decorative. They are load-bearing walls.

The Complaint Was Broad Enough for the Damages Award

T-Mobile argued that Persichetti should have been limited to damages tied to only three text messages specifically described in the complaint. The Georgia Court of Appeals rejected that position. It concluded that the complaint used those messages as examples, not as a ceiling. Because the pleading sought statutory damages for violations and the evidence at the hearing supported a broader number of messages, the monetary award did not exceed the complaint in the way T-Mobile claimed.

In plain English: the court did not read the complaint like a shopping list with only three items. It read it like a claim about an ongoing pattern.

Why T-Mobile Lost Its Strongest Appellate Angle

The Ruling Was Oral, Not Written

T-Mobile also argued that the trial court mishandled its motion to withdraw the admissions. That could have been a meaningful issue, because without those admissions, the 100-text damages theory would have looked a lot shakier.

But there was a catch. Actually, there was a trapdoor.

The trial court orally denied T-Mobile’s motion to withdraw admissions during the hearing. The problem for T-Mobile was that the oral ruling was never reduced to a written, signed, and filed order. Under Georgia appellate practice, an oral ruling generally is not something an appellate court can review as a final order. No written order, no real appellate foothold.

That procedural miss proved fatal to T-Mobile’s argument on the admissions issue. The Georgia Court of Appeals essentially said it had no written ruling to review, so the company was stuck with the admissions and, by extension, the damages built on them.

This is the kind of lesson that makes litigators reach for aspirin. If a ruling matters, get it in writing. Immediately. Courts do not review vibes, implications, or what everyone in the room “understood.” They review orders.

T-Mobile Did Win One Piece of the Appeal

The appellate decision was not a total wipeout for T-Mobile. The Georgia Court of Appeals reversed the part of the trial court’s judgment that enjoined T-Mobile from making telemarketing calls to Persichetti’s number.

Why? Because Persichetti’s complaint did not specifically ask for injunctive relief. Under Georgia default judgment rules, a plaintiff cannot obtain relief that is different in kind from what was demanded in the complaint. A default does not give the court a blank check to award every remedy that seems sensible after the fact.

So the final score was very specific: the $150,000 damages award stayed, but the injunction went away. That is why the decision is best described as an affirmance in part and reversal in part, even though the headline-generating part was the court’s refusal to disturb the money judgment.

Why This Matters Under the TCPA

The case matters because it reinforces the practical bite of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and related FCC do-not-call regulations. Federal rules require telemarketers and sellers to maintain company-specific do-not-call procedures, honor consumer opt-out requests, train personnel, and keep internal records. The FTC’s do-not-call framework also makes clear that a business relationship with a consumer is not a lifetime permission slip. Even where an established business relationship may allow certain contact, a direct request to stop can still trigger entity-specific do-not-call obligations.

That detail is important. Companies sometimes act as though being a customer means being permanently available for marketing. It does not. Under current federal rules, consumers can revoke consent, and the FCC has emphasized that company-specific do-not-call and revocation requests for covered robocalls and robotexts must be honored as soon as practicable and no later than ten business days. In other words, “our system is complicated” is not a magic spell.

The broader regulatory backdrop also shows why courts take these disputes seriously. The FTC reported millions of do-not-call complaints in fiscal year 2025 and more than 258 million active registrations on the National Do Not Call Registry. So when a court sees allegations that a consumer repeatedly tried to stop promotional texts and still kept getting them, the claim does not land in a vacuum. It lands in a crowded, very irritated national context.

The Bigger T-Mobile Backstory

Part of what makes this dispute so interesting is that Persichetti’s conflict with T-Mobile did not begin in the 2024 state-court case. In the earlier federal lawsuit filed in 2019, he alleged that he received marketing texts after signing up for T-Mobile service, tried to opt out through account settings, contacted customer service, and even emailed then-CEO John Legere’s office. According to the complaint, a representative responded that some messages were system-generated and could not be stopped, though the representative also said Persichetti would be removed from marketing texts.

That federal case helped shape the narrative that the later Georgia appellate opinion inherited: not simply that texts were sent, but that the company allegedly continued sending them after repeated stop requests. That kind of allegation tends to make a willfulness argument feel less like a stretch and more like an accusation with teeth.

It also reflects a modern truth about consumer annoyance. Marketing texts are often dismissed as tiny intrusions because they are short, easy to delete, and less dramatic than a screaming robocall at dinner. But courts and regulators have increasingly recognized that repeated unwanted texts can invade privacy, waste time, occupy device capacity, and create the sort of death-by-a-thousand-buzzes irritation that consumers know all too well.

What Businesses Should Learn from the Ruling

1. Answer the Complaint

This sounds absurdly obvious, yet here we are. A large company with substantial legal resources still ended up in default. Once that happened, the whole case became harder to rescue.

2. Treat Requests for Admission Like Live Ammunition

Ignoring requests for admission is one of the fastest ways to hand your opponent a cleaner record than they would have been able to build on their own. Admissions can do in a few pages what months of discovery might otherwise struggle to accomplish.

3. Get Critical Rulings in Writing

If you lose a motion that affects the entire damages model, make sure there is a written order. Otherwise, your appellate strategy may evaporate before the notice of appeal gets warm.

4. Build Real Opt-Out Systems, Not Cosmetic Ones

Written procedures, training, internal lists, monitoring, and timely suppression of numbers are not “nice to have” items. They are the difference between invoking a compliance framework and starring in a cautionary tale.

5. Existing Customers Can Still Say Stop

Being someone’s customer is not the same thing as volunteering to receive endless upsell texts. Entity-specific do-not-call requests still matter, and businesses need systems that honor them promptly.

What Consumers Should Take from It

Consumers should not read this case as a promise that every annoying text will produce a six-figure judgment. That is not how litigation works, and anyone selling that dream is also selling a bridge. But the ruling does highlight a few useful habits.

Keep screenshots. Save dates. Document opt-out requests. Register your number on the Do Not Call Registry. If you call customer service, note who you spoke with and when. If you email a company, keep the response. Small records become big facts when a case later turns on whether a company was told to stop and whether it kept going anyway.

And perhaps most importantly, understand that telemarketing compliance is not just about robocalls from strangers. It can also apply to texts from companies you already know.

Experience and Real-World Takeaways from Cases Like This

In real life, disputes like this rarely begin with a grand constitutional moment. They begin with one text, then another, then another, until the consumer starts to feel like their phone has become an overfriendly mall kiosk. That is what makes the T-Mobile ruling relatable beyond the law books. It captures the lived experience of modern digital annoyance.

For consumers, the experience is often cumulative. One promotional message may be easy to ignore. Ten feels sloppy. A hundred feels personal, even when it is automated. People do not usually run to court over the first buzz in their pocket. They go after the moment when they have changed settings, called support, replied to the message, filled out the online form, maybe muttered at the ceiling, and still the texts keep coming. At that point, the frustration is no longer theoretical. It is part of daily life.

For compliance teams, these cases are equally familiar but in a very different way. Inside a business, unwanted-message disputes often expose the awkward seams between departments. Marketing says the campaign was approved. Customer care says the consumer should have been suppressed. IT says the messaging platform was “working as designed.” Legal says that sentence is not comforting. Then everyone stares at the audit trail and hopes it is less horrifying than expected. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it absolutely is not.

For in-house lawyers, the experience is a reminder that a case can become dangerous before anyone reaches the sexy part of litigation. The true damage often happens in the boring zone: service of process, response deadlines, discovery management, and whether somebody calendared the hearing correctly. This Georgia dispute is a perfect example. The headline is about telemarketing texts, but the engine under the hood is procedure. Miss the answer date. Miss the discovery response date. Fail to secure a written order. Suddenly the legal argument you wanted to make on appeal is standing outside in the rain without a coat.

For plaintiffs’ lawyers, the ruling also validates a practical truth: detailed records matter. Screenshots matter. Copies of emails matter. Notes from customer service calls matter. A consumer who can show repeated efforts to opt out often looks very different from a consumer who simply says, “I got some texts and did not like them.” Courts are much more comfortable with concrete stories than vague irritation.

And for judges, cases like this are a reminder that consumer-protection law does not always arrive wrapped in giant-dollar fraud allegations. Sometimes it is about whether a company respected a simple stop request. That may sound small, but small violations repeated at scale are exactly how trust in commercial messaging gets shredded.

So the real-world experience connected to Georgia Court Upholds $150K Default Judgment Against T-Mobile is not just about one subscriber and one carrier. It is about the daily friction between automated marketing systems and actual human beings. The law steps in when that friction becomes persistent, documented, and avoidable. And when procedure goes sideways, even a giant company can find itself learning that lesson the expensive way.

Final Word

The Georgia Court of Appeals did not use this case to reinvent TCPA litigation. It did something more useful. It showed how an ordinary consumer-protection case can turn into a major loss through ordinary mistakes. The complaint was not answered on time. Discovery admissions were not handled on time. A key oral ruling was not turned into a written order. By the time the appeal arrived, the record was already doing heavy damage.

That is why this ruling will stay relevant. It is a warning to telemarketers, litigators, and corporate defendants alike: compliance failures can start the fire, but procedural failures can pour gasoline on it. T-Mobile managed to knock out the injunction, but the court left the $150,000 default judgment standing. In legal terms, that is not a triumphant comeback. It is more like finding out the discount text you ignored came with a six-figure surcharge.