Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman will personally be arguing in U.S. Federal Court Friday afternoon that the attorney fees the county must pay an opposing lawyers in a class action suit should be dramatically less than the $192,000 they are requesting.
Attorneys Thomas Lyons, Sr. and Thomas Lyons, Jr. have filed many lawsuits against businesses in Minnesota, including restaurants and bowling alleys for violating a federal law that prohibits printing on a receipt the expiration date of a credit card.
In Rouse v. Hennepin County, their suit alleged that the county’s public service centers where people obtain marriage licenses, drivers’ licenses and transact other business, printed credit card expiration dates on the receipts. After initially questioning whether the law applied to government entities, Hennepin County agreed to settle the suit in 2013. For an 18-month period, class members could obtain and redeem vouchers toward select transactions at the service centers. The county paid out $757 in vouchers.
Freeman will be asking U.S. Federal District Court Judge Donovan Frank to set the attorney’s fee award between about $3,600 and $48,000.