Judge Says Receipt Requirement Lawsuits Don’t Allege FACTA Violations

A federal judge has dismissed a FACTA class action lawsuit, finding the plaintiffs failed to allege facts that would constitute a FACTA violation.

Plaintiffs Amanda Fowler, Brett Noble and Larry Tran filed this claim in December 2015.

They name as defendants six taxi cab companies that they say print too many digits from their customers’ credit or debit card numbers on their receipts.

Receipt Requirement Lawsuits Under FACTA

This claim is one of many receipt requirement lawsuits filed under the federal Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, or FACTA.

Enacted in 2003, FACTA provides that “no person that accepts credit cards or debit cards for the transaction of business shall print more than the last 5 digits of the card number or the expiration date upon any receipt provided to the cardholder at the point of the sale or transaction.”

Like many other receipt requirement lawsuits, this one was filed as a FACTA class action lawsuit.

The plaintiffs in this case seek to represent a Class of all consumers who received such receipts from the defendants within two years of the filing of this claim.

They also propose six subclasses, one for each of the named defendant cab companies.

U.S. District Robert C. Jones had dismissed this FACTA lawsuit once before, finding that the plaintiffs had only recited the requirements of FACTA without saying how the defendants had violated them.

Plaintiffs then revised and resubmitted their pleadings. They now allege the defendants’ credit and debit card receipts violate FACTA by showing the first digit and the last four digits of the card number.

Judge Jones referred to other receipt requirement lawsuits that alleged similar facts but yielded different results on motions to dismiss.

In one case from California, a court refused to dismiss where the plaintiff alleged the receipt showed the card number’s first two and last four digits.

Judge Says Printing First Digit Doesn’t Violate FACTA

But Judge Jones concluded that displaying the first digit on the receipt, as the plaintiffs here allege, does not violate FACTA.

He quotes one of many other receipt requirement lawsuits, in which an expert witness said that displaying as many as the first six digits cannot put consumers at risk of harm.

Those digits identify the issuing bank and are not unique identifiers linked to the account, the expert said.

The taxi cab defendants argued that because the first digit only identifies the issuing bank, printing it does not violate FACTA – because FACTA does not prohibit identifying the issuing bank on the receipt. Judge Jones agreed.

The judge also determined that, even if printing the first digit did technically constitute a FACTA violation, it does not put the plaintiffs at risk for the kind of harm Congress had in mind to protect them from because that digit does not identify the card holder.

Therefore the plaintiffs do not have standing to bring a FACTA claim under the facts they have alleged, the judge reasoned.

The Nevada Taxi Cab FACTA Class Action Lawsuit is Brett Noble, et al. v. Nevada Checker Cab, et al., Case No. 2:15-cv-02322-RCJ-VCF, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada.

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.

Get Started