Court Opinion

ID: 9526923
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:26:03.066095+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:25:18.563692
License: Public Domain

LeGRAND, Justice
(dissenting).
No matter how anxious we might be to “protect” Iowa credit-consumers from paying a higher rate of interest, the majority opinion is clearly contrary to the provisions of the applicable federal law governing interest rates chargeable by national banks. (12 U.S.C. § 85). I agree with the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals when it said, in discussing this same problem, any other result would be “to twist the plain meaning of the statute. Fisher v. First National Bank of Chicago, 538 F.2d 1284, 1290-91 (7th Cir. 1976), cert. den., 429 U.S. 1062, 97 S.Ct. 786, 50 L.Ed.2d 778. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reached the same conclusion in Fisher v. First National Bank of Omaha, 548 F.2d 255, 257 (1977), as did the Supreme Court of Minnesota — reluctantly but inevitably — in The Marquette National Bank of Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Service Corp., 262 N.W.2d 358 (Minn.1977).
Both the statute itself and the cases which have considered it (with one federal district court exception cited in the majority opinion) require a holding that Iowa interest rates do not limit what defendants may charge. I find it strange that the majority concedes this in one breath by saying the rate of interest to be charged is “ultimately a question of federal law” while in the next it refuses to apply the statute according to its plain dictates.
The majority seems to have adopted the State’s argument that allowing defendants to charge a higher rate of interest gives them an advantage over other lenders. Really the contrary is true. Certainly there is no difficulty today in obtaining credit cards; the problem is to avoid getting them. If this is true, defendants should be at a disadvantage when they overprice their commodity — credit—in a highly competitive market. There are, indeed, many areas in which consumers need protection, but this is not one of them. See special concurrence in Marquette National Bank at 262 N.W.2d, page 365.
I would affirm the trial court.
REES, J., joins in this dissent.