Pet Supermarket Challenges FACTA Lawsuit

Pet Supermarket Inc. is attempting to evade a FACTA class action lawsuit challenging the amount of information it prints on its customers’ credit card receipts.

Defendant Pet Supermarket says plaintiff Eric Kirchein’s FACTA class action lawsuit should be dismissed because he has no standing to bring the claim.

Alternatively, the company says the court should put proceedings on hold while the U.S. Supreme Court makes a decision in another case that Pet Supermarket believes could be relevant to their own.

Kirchein initiated this proposed FACTA class action lawsuit in January 2016. He says that upon making a $13 purchase at a Pet Supermarket in Florida, he was presented with a receipt that showed 10 digits of his credit card number.

Kirchein says that by printing that many digits of the number, Pet Supermarket has willfully violated the truncation requirement of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, or FACTA.

Consumer Protections Under FACTA

In the interest of preventing identity theft, FACTA forbids businesses from printing more than the last five digits of a customer’s credit or debit card number on electronically-printed credit card receipts.

The card’s expiration date must also not appear on the receipt. Willful violations can subject the business to up to $1,000 in statutory damages for each violation.

In the store’s current motion to dismiss Kirchein’s claim, Pet Supermarket says he has no standing to bring a FACTA claim.

Kirchein argues that the availability of statutory damages gives him all the standing he needs as a matter of law, obviating the need for him to prove actual harm such as identity theft.

Pet Supermarket also challenges Kirchein’s claim that their alleged FACTA violations were willful, which would put the defendant on the hook for the maximum statutory damages of $1,000 per violation.

Pet Supermarket now says that Kirchein’s claim of willful FACTA violations on the store’s part is not plausible.

Kirchein counters that he has enough facts to prove willfulness on Pet Supermarket’s part. He claims Pet Supermarket continued to print too many card number digits even after First Data Corp., Pet Supermarket’s credit card processor, put the company on notice of FACTA’s truncation requirement.

Kirchein says that in trying to escape his claim of willfulness, Pet Supermarket merely cherry-picked allegations from his FACTA lawsuit and cited case law that does not actually apply.

Pet Supermarket alternatively asked the court to temporarily stop procedures in the case until the U.S. Supreme Court issues its decision in Robins v Spokeo Inc., which Pet Supermarket believes will be relevant to their current FACTA lawsuit.

The Spokeo case deals with consumers’ right under the Fair Credit Reporting Act to file complaints against credit reporting firms. Spokeo, which describes itself as a people search engine, is fighting an FCRA claim by a plaintiff who says the search engine described him inaccurately while he was having difficulty finding work.

In the current FACTA lawsuit, Kirchein cites prior decisions by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals saying that the pendency of an unrelated case before the Supreme Court is not an adequate justification for staying an ongoing lawsuit.

Kirchein is seeking statutory and punitive damages and an award of attorneys’ fees. Court certification of his proposed nationwide class is still pending.

The Pet Supermarket FACTA Class Action Lawsuit is Kirchein v. Pet Supermarket Inc., Case No. 0:16-cv-60090 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Free FACTA Class Action Lawsuit Investigation

If you made one or more purchases and the retailer provided you with a receipt that contained more than the last five digits of your credit or debit card number or the expiration date, you may be eligible for a free class action lawsuit investigation and to pursue compensation for these FACTA violations.

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