A sandwich shop manager contends he was only trying to clear some old customers out of his fax machine's speed dial when he accidentally started sending his daily menu specials to a Tampa law office.

"I got tired of getting junk faxes," Tampa criminal lawyer William "Casey" Ebsary said Friday. "I was being inundated with faxes from all types of businesses." So this year, Ebsary said, he contacted a lawyer with expertise in a law that makes it illegal to fax business advertisements to anyone who is not a customer or has not given written permission to do so.

Thomas filed a lawsuit on behalf of Ebsary in February against the Twins Luncheon restaurant in Oldsmar. The lawsuit seeks between $5,000 and $15,000 in compensation for 34 unsolicited faxes sent to Ebsary's office, some after Twins Luncheon was notified by certified mail that the practice was illegal, according to court records. "They were on notice to stop doing it, and they kept doing it," Thomas said.

Ebsary could have asked for up to $51,000 in actual and punitive damages, but "he doesn't want to kill the guy, he doesn't want to own the restaurant," Thomas said. "Just give him reasonable compensation for what you've done."

Twins Luncheon manager Mike Palazzolo, and the owner, his uncle, Ron Palazzolo, said the $7,500 figure they were offered to settle the matter is anything but reasonable. Mike Palazzolo said he routinely faxes his daily special to regular customers. When a couple of them asked to be taken off his mailing list this year, the manager said he was unable to remove the numbers from his fax machine's speed dialer and instead entered a long series of identical digits in their place. He assumed those numbers would be meaningless, but they turned out to be Ebsary's fax number.

When Thomas sent the registered letter Feb. 16 warning of the impending lawsuit, Mike Palazzolo said he immediately called Thomas' law office to ask what number he should remove from the speed dialer. The number Palazzolo said he was given did not match anything on his machine. He said he finally figured out which number was Ebsary's about the time the lawsuit was filed Feb. 24. Ronald Palazzolo said a simple telephone call with the correct number would have resolved the matter the first day Ebsary received one of his nephew's faxes.

"If they had just given us the right number, we would have taken it off," the elder Palazzolo said. "Why do they have to make such a big production out of it? We are a small business. I was going to give them $3,000 out of my pocket just to get the guy off my back," he said. "I understand the law and I think it's a good law, but it was inadvertent ... He's the one that's taking advantage of us."