Court Opinion

ID: 9427766
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:49.664838+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:09.550359
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
with whom The Chief Justice joins, concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion but write separately because I do not fully agree with the statement in note 13 of the opinion, ante, at 569, that the Federal Reserve Board’s approach to the disclosure of acceleration rebates is “equally logical” with other alternatives it might have chosen. In particular, I am concerned that the Board’s emphasis on a creditor’s rebate policy rather than its contract rights steers the Truth in Lending Act away from the moorings of contract law in a manner that may not prove salutary for the welfare of consumers of financial credit.
To be sure, consumers contemplating installment purchases are concerned with the “bottom line,” ante, at 569, of how much they will be required to pay. But there is little doubt, in my view, that consumers who read the required disclosures *571think that they are reading a description of their legal rights and obligations, and not merely an explanation of “practices” or “policies” of the creditor that may be changed to their detriment at the creditor’s will. Although there may be reason to believe that a major finance company, such as Ford Motor Credit Co., will adhere to its rebate practices despite the legal right to demand more upon acceleration than it said it would, I am not sanguine that a less responsible organization always will do the same. The result could be confusion and unanticipated financial loss, as well as fruitless litigation.
Ultimately, I think the interpretation adopted by the Fifth Circuit in McDaniel v. Fulton Nat. Bank, 571 F. 2d 948 (en banc), clarified, 576 F. 2d 1156 (1978) (en banc), which requires disclosure of the creditor’s right to retain finance charges upon acceleration when it differs from the right to such charges upon prepayment, may prove to be a sounder and more durable application of the statute than the position currently adopted by the Board. Nevertheless, I agree with the Court that the Board’s approach is reasonable. In order to uphold the Board’s position, “we need not find that its construction is the only reasonable one, or even that it is the result we would have reached had the question arisen in the first instance in judicial proceedings.” Udall v. Tollman, 380 U. S. 1, 16 (1965), quoting Unemployment Comm’n v. Aragon, 329 U. S. 143, 153 (1946). Accordingly, I agree that the courts should not add to the disclosure obligations that the Board has outlined through its staff opinions.