Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in California

I am a small business owner. My credit card system was hacked, resulting in a breach of a small amount of credit card information. After paying a Visa fine, I am being pursued by one card company in the amount of $12K for fraud recovery (amounts charged erroneously on five of their customers' cards). I have requested details of the charges, but they will not provide me with card information, dates or locations or alleged fraudulent transactions. All they provided me with are the last four digits of the cards in questions and the $$ amount of the charges. As a result, I don't know if these cards were even breached through my system. Is there a burden of proof on them to provide me with this, to prove that I am responsible? I'm a little bit (make that a lot!) scared that if I don't just pony up the $$, they'll "blackball" me and I won't be able to accept credit cards at all. At the same time, this is a huge amount of money for me and I'm inclined to refuse until they prove I'm responsible. What is the best course of action?


Asked on 2/08/11, 10:22 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
David Gibbs The Gibbs Law Firm, APC

I would hold the line that you will not pay them anything until they prove their damages. Either they provide you with the information and settle, or they will sue you in which case they will have to provide that information to prevail in the lawsuit. The risk is that they will just move forward with suing you, in which case you will need to retain an attorney and pay a lot of attorneys fees to do so. Then, if they prove that you are liable, you will now have paid your attorney, their attorneys fees and costs, plus the original $12K. You'll have to weigh the benefit of pushing them to the point of being sued.

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Answered on 2/08/11, 3:56 pm


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