In Meyers v. Nicolet Restaurant of De Pere, LLC, an opinion issued on December 13, 2016, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that a proposed class action suit brought under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (“FACTA”) should be dismissed due to the named plaintiff’s failure to establish Article III standing. The Court applied the Supreme Court’s May 2016 decision Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins to conclude that the plaintiff had not suffered a concrete injury-in-fact simply by asserting a bare statutory violation, reasoning that “Congress’ judgment that there should be a legal remedy for the violation of a statute does not mean each statutory violation creates Article III injury.” Rather, the statutory violation must cause the plaintiff concrete harm.

Background -

The Meyers case is one of two FACTA class action suits the same plaintiff filed in April 2015. Both suits contend that the defendant failed to truncate credit card receipts as required by FACTA, the 2003 amendment to the Fair Credit Reporting Act that prohibits the display of certain credit and debit card information in printed receipts. Meyers sought only statutory damages for himself and on behalf of the putative class based on a restaurant’s alleged statutory violations. He did not allege that anyone else received a copy of the receipt or that he suffered identity theft of any kind as a result. The district court denied the motion for class certification and Meyers appealed.