The Cheesecake Factory Restaurants, Inc. recently asked a New York federal district judge to dismiss a putative Fair and Accurate Transactions Act putative class action that accuses the restaurant chain of printing too many credit card numbers on consumers’ receipts.  Relying on the Supreme Court’s decision in Spokeo, Cheesecake Factory argues that the class action complaint “should be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction because Plaintiffs have failed to plead anything more than a bare, one-time statutory violation.”  For instance, according to Cheesecake Factory, “Plaintiffs do not allege that they lost money, their credit suffered, their identities were stolen, or that improper charges were made on their credit cards.”  Accordingly, the plaintiffs have failed to allege a “concrete harm” sufficient to confer subject matter jurisdiction on the Court.

In response, the plaintiffs claim that various courts “have found that merchants cause consumers a concrete injury in fact by printing their personal financial information in violation of FACTA’s substantive provisions.”  The plaintiffs further argue that Cheesecake Factory was well aware of FACTA’s prohibitions but still “allowed its computerized payment system to routinely print ten digits, thus giving Cheesecake employees and anyone else who saw the receipts (that are routinely left unattended on the tables of Cheesecakes 208 restaurants), access to this information, and forcing Plaintiffs to take steps to protect the receipt from further disclosure.”

The case is Tibbetts v. The Cheesecake Factory Restaurants Inc., case number 2:17-cv-00968, in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.  We will continue to monitor the case for a final decision on Cheesecake Factory’s motion to dismiss.