| Volume 70 Number 10 |
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The People’s Lawyer’s Tip of the Day
Don't think stopping payment on a check protects you from having to pay when a problem arises. If the check is transferred to another person, you probably will have to pay, even if you have a legitimate reason to not pay the person to whom you gave the check. Click here for more.
Student Loan Interest Rate Set to Double
Bad news if you're a college student, or will be soon. Unless congress acts soon, federal student loan interest rates will double this summer. Since a 2007 law offering rate reductions did not specify the rate after this year, they will revert from 3.4% to 6.8%. Although President Obama urged Congress to stop the rate hike, it is impossible to know how Congress will prioritize issues in an election year. What other changes may be coming? Click here for more.
FBI Plans to Monitor Social Networks
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is planning the development of a monitoring system that would automatically search social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter for "relevant information" related to terrorism, cyber crime, and surveillance. Some are worried about the implications of such a system, with Jennifer Lynch of the Electronic Frontier Foundation specifically concerned about free speech and right to privacy. What information can the government access? Click here for more.
Your Money
What are the payments on a parental (PLUS) loan (a federally insured loan used to pay a dependent student's tuition)? Click here for more.
For the Lawyers
Retailer isn’t liable for willful violation of FACTA. The Third Circuit held that a retailer that printed the month of a credit card’s expiration on a customer’s receipt isn’t liable for a “willful” violation of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act. The retailer displayed the month but not the year of the card’s expiration date. The FACTA provides that merchants who accept credit or debit cards shall not print “the expiration date” of the cards upon any receipt. The court stated, “We conclude that the most natural reading of the phrase ‘expiration date’ is that it refers to the information or data (usually a string of numbers) contained in the expiration date ‘field’ on the face of the credit or debit card. In other words, FACTA is best read as prohibiting merchants from printing the numbers in that field, which [the plaintiff] alleges Hilfiger did in this case by printing ‘EXPIRY: 04/##.’ The fact that Hilfiger printed only a part or portion of the expiration date numbers from [the plaintiff’s] credit card does not change the result.” The court nonetheless concluded that there was not a willful violation of the Act. The court explained that the retailer’s interpretation of the statute, “although erroneous, was at least objectively reasonable. [The retailer] did not run ‘a risk of violating the law substantially greater than the risk associated with a reading that was merely careless.’” Click here for more.