Tammie Davis v. Devanlay Retail Group, Inc.

ORDER

This appeal requires us to resolve whether the Song-Beverly Credit Card Act (Song-Beverly) prohibits a retailer from requesting a customer’s personal identification information (PII) at the point of sale after the customer has paid with a credit card, even if it would not be objectively reasonable for the customer to construe the request to mean that providing PII is required to pay by credit card. The answer to this question could have a significant impact on the practices of thousands of California retailers, ás a broad construction of Song-Beverly could prohibit many retailers’ practice of requesting PII from .customers immediately after they have completed a credit card transaction. We find no controlling precedent in the decisions of the California Supreme Court or Courts of Appeal, see Cal. R. Ct. 8.548(a)(2), and find the statute’s language and legislative history ambiguous. For these reasons, we think it appropriate that the state court of last resort be given an opportunity to resolve the question in the first instance.

We therefore respectfully ask the Supreme Court of California to exercise its discretion to decide the certified question set forth in Part I of…