Opinion ID: 2191418
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 14

Heading: III-A The Fourteenth Amendment Vaqueness Issues.

Text: By their cross appeal plaintiffs have challenged the phrase in Section 1326 of the original Act, person not authorized to receive that information and the phrase in Section 1323(2) of the original Act, $100 for each item of erroneous information reported which was the result of final action, as being too vague to accord with the due process of law mandate of the Fourteenth Amendment. On each of these issues the Superior Court Justice ruled against plaintiffs' contention. Plaintiffs' claim of unconstitutional vagueness in the phrase person not authorized. . . fails because of the 1978 amendment to Section 1326. As pertinent, that section originally read: any officer or employee of a consumer reporting agency who knowingly and intentionally provides information concerning an individual from the agency's files to a person not authorized to receive that information shall be fined . . . or imprisoned . . .. 10 M.R.S.A. § 1326 (Supp.1977-78) (amended 1978) (emphasis added) The 1978 amendment changed the language as follows: any officer or employee of a consumer reporting agency who knowingly and intentionally provides information concerning an individual from the agency's files to a person not authorized, within the meaning of sections 1313 and 1314 subsection 1, to receive that information shall be fined . . . or imprisoned . .. 10 M.R.S.A. § 1326 (Supp.1979-80) (emphasis added) The language given emphasis replaced the prior language challenged by plaintiffs as vague. The amending Act, P.L.1977 c. 677, was entitled AN ACT to Clarify and Define Certain Existing Provisions of the Maine Fair Credit Reporting Act. The Statement of Fact accompanying Legislative Document No. 2192, from which the amending Act was drawn, stated that this change clarifies the meaning of authorized in Section 1326. We think it plain, then, that the amendment purported to express what the legislative intendment had been from the outset. This kind of clarification requires rejection of the vagueness challenge here made by plaintiffs which involves, we stress, no claim of rights deriving from reliance on the terms of the statute prior to the 1978 amendment. We also turn aside plaintiffs' vagueness attack on the provision in the original version of Section 1323(2) authorizing an award of special damages as the Court may find appropriate, but in any event not less than $100 for each item of erroneous information reported which was the result of final action. (emphasis added) As to the alleged vagueness in the language emphasized, which appears to make erroneous information reported the result of rather than, as would make sense in the context, the factor which results in final action, the Superior Court Justice decided that the provision could have been written more artfully but nevertheless a reasonable person would conclude that a reporting agency would be fined for each item of erroneous information resulting in final action by the user, that is, [which is] a determining factor of the user's decision. We agree, and we add as a supporting consideration the subsequent amendment of Section 1323(2), [22] which, although of more extensive scope, includes a reiteration of legislative intendment that the agency be penalized for each separate infraction that may have contributed to a user's adverse decision.