Daniel Edelman – Overlawyered

Turn those credit slips into gold

Walter Olson — Thu, 10 May 2007 00:13:42 +0000

The Chicago law firm of Edelman, Combs, Latturner & Goodwin, LLC has some wonderful news for you:

We are looking for electronically generated credit / debit card receipts which show either (a) the card expiration date or (b) any digits of the credit/ debit card number other than the last five.

In order to protect consumers against identity theft, an amendment to the Fair Credit Reporting Act with a final effective date of December 4, 2006 requires merchants who accept credit/ debit cards and issue electronic receipts to program their machines to not show either the expiration date or more than the last 5 digits of the credit/ debit card number. The expiration date is important because a thief can use it together with the last four or five digits of the number to reconstruct the entire card number.

It is a violation to show either the expiration date or more than the last 5 digits of the card number. (We have seen some receipts where 4 or 5 other digits are shown, and that is a violation.) It is not necessary that any identity theft have actually occurred. Damages for a willful violation are $100 to $1,000 per receipt. The class representative may be able to obtain some additional compensation.

We have a number of pending cases alleging this violation and are interested in other merchants who are violating the law.

The burgeoning volume of entrepreneurial litigation over insufficiently blinded credit slips is the subject of a recent Wall Street Journal article: see Robin Sidel, “Retailers Whose Slips Show Too Much Attract Lawsuits”, Apr. 28, reprinted Cattle Network, Apr. 28. For more about name partner Daniel Edelman, see Nov. 15, 1999 (infamous BancBoston settlement), Feb. 7, 2000, and Dec. 11, 2006. The Edelman firm’s website has a long listing of notable case involvements which boasts of its role in mortgage escrow class actions, but does not mention BancBoston.

Tags: class actions, Daniel Edelman, FACTA

Turn those credit slips into gold is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Daniel Edelman vs. subprime lenders

Walter Olson — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 00:05:09 +0000

The Chicago class action lawyer, vividly remembered for his role in the notorious BancBoston Mortgage case, among others (Nov. 15, 1999, Feb. 7, 2000; see also Dec. 15, 2004 for his involvement in junk-fax litigation) is now filing suits against lenders who solicit persons with poor credit histories for more loans. The Northwest Indiana Times kindly quotes me on the subject (Joe Carlson, “Lawsuits targeting credit scams”, Nov. 27).

Tags: about the site, Chicago, class actions, Daniel Edelman, Indiana

Daniel Edelman vs. subprime lenders is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Land of junk-fax lawsuits

Walter Olson — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 00:18:20 +0000

Illinois lawyers have established their state as the new hotbed of junk-fax litigation, according to Chicago Business. “In 2002 in Downstate St. Clair County, a Circuit Court judge ordered Seventeen Motors Inc. to pay $7 million for sending about 33,000 unsolicited faxes.” Cleveland-based Charter One Bank recently “agreed to pay $1.8 million for sending unsolicited faxes to about 70,000 phone numbers.” And “Cook County Circuit Court Judge Patrick McGann alone has since 2002 presided over more than 100 lawsuits, all seeking class action status, filed against senders of junk faxes.” Particularly active in the business: Daniel Edelman and his firm of Edelman Combs Latturner & Goodwin LLC. (Shruti Dat? Singh, “An IL industry: junk-fax law suits”, Chicago Business, Dec. 12). For more on junk-fax litigation, see Mar. 19, 2004, Jul. 19, 2003, etc.

Tags: class actions, Cleveland, Daniel Edelman, Illinois

Land of junk-fax lawsuits is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system