Court Opinion

ID: 9466603
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:20:42.432648+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:49.564839
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
Judge Sprecher’s opinion for the panel is exemplary in its logic, learning, legal analy*1293sis and lucidity of expression. But I do not read it as seriously suggesting that the result we reach furthers the underlying purposes of the Truth in Lending Act. Among these meritorious purposes are the disclosure to buyers of the costs of credit and the alerting of customers to the possibility that their property may be reached to satisfy the obligation which they have incurred.
Here we require the prominent disclosure of a rather esoteric right to unearned premiums for physical damage insurance (protecting both the seller’s and the buyer’s interest in the property), which may be used to provide replacement insurance coverage or applied against the buyer’s debt in the event of cancellation of the insurance. This “security interest” is normal in the circumstances but is entirely incidental to the principal consumer credit transaction. Primarily, it assures maintenance of the insurance and is not necessarily even related to default on the principal debt.
To disclose this “security interest” on the face of the contract (which is the point here) is merely to add virtually inconsequential information — lengthening, complicating and trivializing the disclosure for no apparent benefit.
As Senator Proxmire has said:
“As sponsor of the original Truth in Lending Act I am becoming more and more concerned that its beneficial purposes are being frustrated by unnecessarily complex disclosure requirements which consumers may ignore or fail to understand.
“In addition, the very complexity of the requirements may impose significant costs and other burdens on creditors despite their good faith efforts to comply with the law.” 122 Cong.Rec. 23609 (1976).
I concur today with this Court’s good faith efforts to apply (or comply with) the law, but I feel some concern about the purposes for which we are laboring. I hope that the important ends of credit disclosure will not be obscured in a whirl of litigious gamesmanship.