In Dillard v. Thomasville Auto, 2016 WL 6471928— F.Supp.3d —- (M.D.N.C. 2016), Judge Schroeder found that disjointed printing on a RISC did not constitute a TILA violation.
The court finds that in this case no reasonable consumer would interpret the disclosure form in the manner Dillard argues, and it would not be reasonable and equitable to do so. The construction Dillard proposes – that the first nineteen payments were to be made weekly, beginning one month after closing, and that the final “monthly” payment was to be made fifteen months later – is implausible for several reasons: it yields an outlandish APR, contradicts the form’s own terms, and fails to explain why the final payment would be referred to as a “monthly” payment. Dillard’s proposed interpretation would mean that she was to borrow $3,416.47, pay $4,180.00 in the following nineteen weeks, and then – fifteen months after the final weekly payment – make a final “monthly” payment. This yields an effective APR of 84% (Doc. 15 at 10), contradicting the APR disclosed on the top of the form, 29% (Doc. 1-1). Dillard’s reading of the disclosure form would also contradict its other terms, including the finance charge, amount financed, total payment amount, and total sale price. Instead, the only plausible interpretation is that the two lines in question belong in the rows in which the characters’ lower halves sit, such that the first nineteen payments are to be made monthly beginning one month after closing and the twentieth payment is to be made one month after the nineteenth payment. This is consistent with the APR, finance charge, and all other figures on the form. Furthermore, the other entries on the form are printed well above the lines on which they belong, such that the reader can easily see that for some reason the form was not fully centered when printed, that all figures appear slightly higher than normal on the page, and that the payment figures therefore should have been printed slightly lower on the page. It is also clear that all printed amounts, dates, and payments match each other horizontally. Thus, had the form been printed correctly, the first line would be printed on the “monthly” row and the second line on the row directly below it (which is unlabeled). (See Doc. 1-1.) This conclusion finds support in Larrabee. There, the court similarly dismissed a TILA claim where the form in question was claimed to be ambiguous as to when payments would be due. 714 F. Supp. 2d at 567-68. The court found that no reasonable consumer could construe the payment schedule to reach the plaintiff’s interpretation. As in the present case, the Larrabee plaintiff’s reading would have yielded a wholly unreasonable APR and a strange payment schedule. . . . The court therefore finds that the only plausible interpretation of Dillard’s copy of the TILA disclosure form is the one Thomasville advances. Consequently, Thomasville’s motion for judgment on the pleadings will be granted.