Property Law Developments—Joseph William Singer

A trial judge in Massachusetts has ruled in Citibank (South Dakota) v. DeCristoforo, (Mass. Super. Ct. 2011), 39 Mass. Lawyers Weekly 1 (Jan. 19, 2011), that a South Dakota based credit card company’s interest rates above 18 percent charged to a defaulting credit card borrower in Massachusetts were unconscionable. The judge applied Massachusetts common law to protect the borrower from interest rates deemed to be onerous even though the bank that issued the credit card was located in another state whose law would have allowed the interest rate. The contract presumably contained a choice-of-law clause for South Dakota law and if such a clause were in the contract, the judge overrode it in deciding to apply Massachusetts law to protect a Massachusetts domiciliary. The case is of interest because it may be used as precedent in subprime mortgage case involving borrowing from out-of-state banks.