Hood

Canieva Hood and the Congress of California Seniors appeal from an order of dismissal of their class action complaint seeking monetary and injunctive relief against Santa Barbara Bank & Trust (Santa Barbara) and other respondents. This dispute concerns Santa Barbara’s seizure of Hood’s tax refund. While seeking a tax refund anticipation loan (RAL) in 2002, Hood completed Santa Barbara’s RAL application which provided that she would (1) pledge her 2001 tax refund as security for a RAL, (2) authorize the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to deposit her refund into a Santa Barbara account, and (3) authorize Santa Barbara to use her 2001 refund to pay her preexisting debts to other RAL lenders. Santa Barbara denied Hood’s loan application because a third party bank claimed that she owed it money for a preexisting RAL. After the IRS deposited Hood’s 2001 refund into the Santa Barbara account, Santa Barbara paid it to the third party bank.

Appellants’ complaint includes a tort claim for conversion, and other causes of action based on several laws, including the Consumers Legal Remedies Act (Civ. Code, § 1750 et seq. (the CLRA)), the unfair competition law (Bus. & Prof. Code, §…

I respectfully dissent.

The effect of the majority’s decision is to permit a trial court in California to exercise regulatory control over the conditions under which national banks make refund anticipation loans (RAL’s) and, acting pursuant to cross-collection agreements with other national banks, apply tax refunds deposited into special accounts to satisfy balances due on RAL’s made in prior tax years. Regulations adopted by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) preempt state laws that purport to regulate the deposit-taking and non-real-estate-lending activities of national banks. Here, appellants seek a state court injunction invalidating a federal banking practice approved by the *549 OCC. In my view, the majority should stay out of the federal banking business. Because the trial court correctly concluded that appellant’s claims are preempted by federal law, I would affirm.

The majority errs, in my view, when it applies a presumption against preemption. This is a dispute over the performance of contracts by and between federally regulated national banks. As the United States Supreme Court has noted, the presumption against preemption is “not triggered when the…

Canieva Hood and the Congress of California Seniors appeal from an order of dismissal of their class action complaint seeking monetary and injunctive relief against Santa Barbara Bank & Trust (Santa Barbara) and other respondents. This dispute concerns Santa Barbara's seizure of Hood's tax refund. While seeking a tax refund anticipation loan (RAL) in 2002, Hood completed Santa Barbara's RAL application which provided that she would (1) pledge her 2001 tax refund as security for a RAL, (2) authorize the IRS to deposit her refund into a Santa Barbara account, and (3) authorize Santa Barbara to use her 2001 refund to pay her preexisting debts to other RAL lenders. Santa Barbara denied Hood's loan application because a third party bank claimed that she owed it money for a preexisting RAL. After the IRS deposited Hood's 2001 refund into the Santa Barbara account, Santa Barbara paid it to the third party bank.

Appellants' complaint includes a tort claim for conversion, and other causes of action based on several laws, including the Consumers Legal Remedies Act (Civ.Code, § 1750 et seq. [the CLRA]), the Unfair Competition Law (Bus. & Prof.Code, § 17200 et seq. [the UCL]),…