Dish Network has agreed to settle an 11-year-old lawsuit that found that the satellite TV service provider made millions of illegal telemarketing calls to potential customers in four states -- California, North Carolina, Ohio and Illinois -- for $210 million.

The states originally brought the suit in 2009, and in 2017 a federal court in Illinois found that Dish violated telemarketing laws by making more than 55 million pre-recorded automated calls, also known as “robo-calls,” to thousands of homes in the four states, many on the federal Do Not Call registry, to sell and promote its satellite TV services. The court had originally ruled that Dish would pay the states $280 million. 

Dish appealed that judgment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which upheld the lower court’s judgment and injunction. But the appellate court vacated the lower court’s damages and penalties award, adding that it should be recalculated. The parties agreed to resolve the remaining monetary portion of the case with today’s settlement.

As part of the settlement, the federal government will receive the bulk of the settlement ($126 million), followed by California ($39.9 million); Ohio ($17 million); North Carolina ($14 million) and Illinois ($13.04 million) 

“Unwanted telemarketing calls are a nuisance and can be an illegal invasion of privacy,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a press release. “Californians have the power to join the Do Not Call list to avoid harassing calls. Unfortunately, Dish Network flouted the rules and now they will pay.” 

A copy of the settlement, which still requires court approval, can be found here. 

A Texas woman who received more than 150 “robo-calls” over the course of a year from Time Warner Cable sent her own message to the cable operator Tuesday after a Manhattan federal judge ordered TWC to pay her nearly $230,000 and scolded the operator for what he called “particularly egregious” conduct.

Araceli King of Irving, Texas said the calls began in October 2013 and were for a former Time Warner Cable customer Luiz Perez who previously had her cellphone number. But even after King had contacted a live TWC rep and after a seven-minute conversation believed she convinced them she was not Luiz Perez, the calls continued.

Time Warner Cable claimed that because it believed it was calling Perez, who had consented to the calls, it was not in violation of the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the 1991 law specifically meant to prevent computerized or  “robo-calls” and telemarketing abuses. In addition, the calls were made by an interactive voice response (IVR) system set up to notify customers of delinquent payments, not technically an automatic dialer, which TWC claimed also does not violate the Act.

In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein wasn’t buying any of it.

“A responsible business in TWC’s position might have dispatched a live agent to reach out to Luiz Perez after the IVR failed to reach him the first several times,” Hellerstein wrote in his ruling. “…The responsible company will reduce its exposure dramatically by taking proactive steps to mitigate damages, while its competitor, who unthinkingly robo-dials the same person hundreds of time[s] over many months without pausing to wonder why it cannot reach him, cannot complain about much higher liability.”

He added that even after King filed the lawsuit on March 26, 2014 she received an additional 74 calls from TWC, which proved to the court that TWC was not taking the lawsuit or its customer complaint seriously.

“Defendant harassed Plaintiff with robo-calls until she had to resort to a lawsuit to make the calls stop, and even then TWC could not be bothered to update the information in the its IVR system,” Hellerstein wrote. “The calls placed after March 26, 2014 are particularly egregious violations of the TCPA and indicate that TWC simply did not take this lawsuit seriously.”

Hellerstein awarded King treble damages -- $1,500 for each of the 153 calls – for a total of $229,500.

According to reports, Time Warner Cable is reviewing the decision.