Seibert

These five appeals are from judgments which concluded eleven separate actions commenced in the Superior Courts of Alameda County and the City and County of San Francisco. The defendant in each action is a major retail merchant whose practices in selling on installment credit are regulated by the Unruh Act (Civ. Code, div. 3, pt. 4, tit. 2, ch. 1 [“Retail Installments Sales”], commencing with § 1801.) Despite the multiple origins of the appeals, a principal question on each of them is whether the various defendants (respondents in this court) are complying with the Act, as properly interpreted, in the computation and collection of finance charges billed to credit customers. The challenged judgments were entered in different procedural sequences, but upon facts which were substantially identical as pleaded in each of the actions and which are not materially disputed in any of them. Because the principal legal issue and the factual elements are thus common to all of them, we dispose of the five appeals in this single decision.

1 Civil 33020

The Alameda County Actions

Among the eleven actions mentioned, seven were commenced in the Alameda County Superior Court between…