K9 Bytes, Inc. v. Arch Capital Funding, LLC

56 Misc. 3d 807, 57 N.Y.S.3d 625
CourtNew York Supreme Court
DecidedMay 4, 2017
StatusPublished
Cited by18 cases

This text of 56 Misc. 3d 807 (K9 Bytes, Inc. v. Arch Capital Funding, LLC) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New York Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
K9 Bytes, Inc. v. Arch Capital Funding, LLC, 56 Misc. 3d 807, 57 N.Y.S.3d 625 (N.Y. Super. Ct. 2017).

Opinion

OPINION OF THE COURT

Linda S. Jamieson, J.

There are two motions to dismiss before the court, one filed by each defendant. Although the defendants are similarly situated, in that each is a company that provides working capital to businesses, using contracts that expressly state that they are “merchant agreements” and not loans, the forms that each company uses are different in one main respect, as will be discussed below.

Background

A brief summary of the relevant facts is necessary. Certain of the plaintiffs entered into three different agreements with Arch Capital Funding, LLC during 2015 and 2016. Pursuant to these agreements, Arch gave plaintiffs $166,000, and plaintiffs gave Arch future receivables worth $241,334. Each of these three agreements provided that Arch could take no more than 13 to 15% of that day’s receivables, or a set daily amount. The agreements state that payments made to Arch “shall be conditioned upon Merchant’s sale of products and services and the payment therefore by Merchant’s customers.” The agreements had no termination date, but provided for an automatically renewable one-year term (the evergreen provision).

The agreements all provide that Arch shall, upon plaintiffs’ request, “reconcile the Merchant’s account by either crediting or debiting the difference between the amount debited and the Specified Percentage, from or back to the Merchant’s bank account so that the amount debited each month equals the Specified Percentage.” This is the “reconciliation provision.” The agreements also allow plaintiffs to request that the estimated daily amount be changed.

[811]*811Plaintiff Epazz, Inc. and defendant Cap Call, LLC entered into an agreement1 dated February 2016 in which Cap Call gave Epazz $120,000 in exchange for future receivables of $179,880. The agreement provides, similarly to the Arch agreements, for Cap Call to take no more than 15% of the daily receipts, or a fixed daily amount of $1,635. The agreement provides that the receipts shall be “from settlement amounts which would otherwise be due to Merchant from electronic check transaction or other payment processing transactions.” The agreement also had an evergreen provision, just as the Arch agreements did. Although Cap Call argues that its agreement contains a reconciliation provision, a review of the language that it points to does not support this. As Cap Call states in its memorandum of law, the provision only provides that Cap Call can “view Epazz’s bank account ‘in order to calculate the amount of [Epazz’s] daily payment.’ ” Unlike the Arch agreements, it does not state that Epazz can seek to have the amount changed. Nor does it state that any overage or underpayment will be repaid to plaintiffs or taken from plaintiffs.

Plaintiffs breached the agreements on or about March 1, 2016, and commenced this action soon after.

Analysis

The amended complaint contains 12 causes of action. Three concern usury, and four concern Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) (18 USC § 1962). In sum, the claims are: (1) to vacate the judgments by confession because of usury “and other wrongful conduct”; (2) to obtain a judgment against defendants because of usury, and to vacate the agreements; (3) to obtain a judgment based on the overcharge of interest; (4) damages for the violation of the Licensed Lender Law (Banking Law § 340); (5) damages arising under RICO, subsection (a); (6) damages arising under RICO, subsection (b); (7) damages arising under RICO, subsection (c); (8) damages arising under RICO, subsection (d); (9) to obtain a judgment rescinding the agreements; (10) damages for fraudulent inducement; (11) damages for unconscionability; and (12) damages for prima facie tort.

Arch argues that certain of the claims—the first, second, ninth and eleventh—all must be dismissed out of hand because [812]*812they are not actionable claims under New York law. Beginning with the first, to vacate the confessions of judgment because of usury, the court cannot agree with Arch that there is no such cause of action. Rather, all of the cases cited by Arch allow for such relief upon a plenary action—which plaintiffs have commenced. (See e.g. Malhado v Cordani, 153 AD2d 673, 673 [2d Dept 1989] [“A person seeking to vacate a confession of judgment and judgment entered thereon must commence a plenary action for that relief”]; L.R. Dean, Inc. v International Energy Resources, 213 AD2d 455, 456 [2d Dept 1995] [“The general rule is that a party seeking to set aside an affidavit of confession of judgment and to vacate a judgment entered thereon must commence a plenary action for that relief”].) The first cause of action cannot thus be dismissed on this basis. However, this claim is addressed in detail below.

Next, the ninth cause of action seeks rescission based on misrepresentations or unilateral mistake. Putting aside whether rescission can be pleaded as a claim or not, there are no facts alleged that would support a claim based on misrepresentations or unilateral mistake. Plaintiffs claim that defendants misled them by representing that they were entering into “loans governed by usury laws,” but instead caused them “to enter into ‘merchant agreements.’ ”2 They state that they would, not have knowingly entered into merchant agreements, because what they really wanted were loans. Indeed, plaintiffs allege that “the word ‘purchase’ or ‘sale’ would have caused Passley to decline a transaction with [defendants] because a loan—the product Passley wanted to obtain—is not a purchase or sale.”

A review of the contracts in this action shows that not only do they all clearly state that they involve purchases or sales, but they all expressly state that they are not loans. Even if someone were confused by the contracts, or did not understand the obligation or the process, by reading the documents, one would grasp immediately that they certainly were not straightforward loans. The very first heading on the page was “Merchant Agreement,” and the second heading says “Purchase and Sale of Future Receivables.” (This is the third heading on the Cap Call agreement, with the second reading “Merchant Information.”)

[813]*813For plaintiffs to state that they would not have entered into a purchase or sale if they had known that that is what they were doing is utterly undermined by the documents themselves. As the Second Department has held, in Karsanow v Kuehlewein (232 AD2d 458, 459 [2d Dept 1996]),

“the subject provision was clearly set out in the . . . agreements, and where a party has the means available to him of knowing by the exercise of ordinary intelligence the truth or real quality of the subject of the representation, he must make use of those means or he will not be heard to complain that he was induced to enter into the transaction by misrepresentations.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.)

So too here, plaintiffs had the means to understand that the agreements set forth that they were not loans. As it has long been settled that a party is bound by that which it signs, the court finds that the ninth cause of action, for rescission based on misrepresentation or mistake, and the tenth cause of action, for fraudulent inducement based on misrepresentation, must be dismissed as a matter of law. (Pimpinello v Swift & Co., 253 NY 159, 162-163 [1930] [“(T)he signer of a deed or other instrument, expressive of a jural act, is conclusively bound thereby.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
56 Misc. 3d 807, 57 N.Y.S.3d 625, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/k9-bytes-inc-v-arch-capital-funding-llc-nysupct-2017.