Court Opinion

ID: 9632165
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:05:23.098429+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:09.963060
License: Public Domain

WOLFE, Chief Justice
(concurring).
I concur except for those statements in the majority opinion censuring the plaintiff and charging that its practices are morally wrong. Arthur H. Ham, for many years Dir*542ector of Division of Remedial Loans of Russell Sage Foundation and an authority on the small loan business has, in his miscellaneous pamphlets, demonstrated that only those loan companies such as the Provident Loan Company of New York City with large capital loaned in small sums can do business at a cost of under 3 per cent a month. The plaintiff, as well as other finance companies licensed and regulated by the state, is engaged in a legitimate and necessary business. While the interest which it charged the defendants may on the surface seem high, it was clearly within the charge permitted by statute. The Legislature took into consideration these factors when it established the maximum rates. Long before Remedial Loan statutes were passed in Utah more than one Legislature had before it the data as to the cost of investigating and losses sustained by companies engaged in carrying on the small loan business on the various levels of capital employed without the security of chattels or real estate but on the security of personal sureties only. Knowing nothing of the earnings of the plaintiff or other finance companies, I cannot say that their charges are “unconscionable”, nor do I think their conduct can be properly classified as a “scheme.”