The Greenbrier Resort
CHARLESTON – A tech company that helps run The Greenbrier’s payment systems wants a class action over the resort’s credit card receipts into federal court.
Kevin W. Rouse originally filed the lawsuit last May on behalf of himself and others similarly situated accusing The Greenbrier Hotel Corporation of violating the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act by printing his payment card’s expiration date on a customer receipt for a bunker tour at the White Sulphur Springs resort.
Rouse says he bought three tickets for the bunker tour on April 15, 2025, and received a single printed receipt that truncated his card number to the last four digits but still displayed the card’s expiration date, which federal law generally prohibits in order to reduce the risk of identity theft.
FACTA, an amendment to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, requires merchants to truncate credit and debit card numbers on receipts and omit expiration dates, and violations can expose businesses to class actions seeking statutory damages even when consumers can’t show actual financial loss.
Rouse initially sued only The Greenbrier in Kanawha County Circuit Court in May 2025, later amending his complaint to add TAC IT America Corp., an online reservation management software company the resort uses to facilitate credit and debit card transactions.
On July 6, TAC filed a notice of removal transferring the case from Kanawha Circuit Court to federal court. TAC says it could not seek removal earlier because Rouse’s original and first amended complaints alleged only a “technical violation” of FACTA and failed to plead any “injury-in-fact.”
TAC points to recent case law holding that a consumer doesn’t suffer a concrete injury merely by receiving a receipt that prints a card expiration date or more digits than allowed, absent a nonspeculative risk of identity theft. TAC cites Fourth Circuit and district court decisions that reject theories of harm where the consumer simply “expended resources to secure the receipt” or worried about hypothetical risks without any material exposure of card data.
Because Rouse’s early pleadings did not allege that the receipt was disclosed to third parties or that any identity thief had access to it, TAC and The Greenbrier both moved to dismiss in state court, arguing lack of standing, while acknowledging they could not remove on a complaint that didn’t allege concrete harm.
The legal landscape changed, TAC says, when Rouse sought and obtained leave to file a second amended class action complaint on June 19. In it, Rouse claims the defendants’ conduct caused him “anxiety, loss of sleep and headaches” and that he made other purchases at The Greenbrier resulting in additional paper receipts that have since been “lost, discarded or stolen.”
TAC says it must accept the new injury allegations as true even though it “denies” them and intends to challenge standing and liability after discovery. Once Rouse added claims of emotional distress and heightened risk arising from allegedly exposed card data, TAC says the case presented a federal question suitable for federal jurisdiction.
FACTA, which was passed in 2003, provides that “no person that accepts credit cards or debt cards for the transaction of business shall print more than the last five digits of the card number or the expiration date upon any receipt provided to the cardholder at the point of the sale or transaction.”
The law gave businesses three years to comply with the regulations.
But, Rouse says The Greenbrier has willfully violated the law and failed to protect him and other potential class members against identify theft, credit card fraud and debit card fraud by printing more than the last five numbers of the card on paper receipts provided at the point of sale for credit and debit card transactions.
Specifically, the complaint says the resort, which is owned by U.S. Senator Jim Justice and his family, printed both the last five digits as well as the card expiration date on receipts.
The proposed class would include all persons to whom The Greenbrier provided an electronically printed receipt at the point of sale or transaction within the two years prior to the filing of the complaint on which the expiration date of the credit card is printed. Excluded from the class is anyone who suffered identity theft as a result of the resort’s FACTA violations.
The complaint says the size of the class would be determined through resort sales transactional records.
In addition to an order certifying the class, Rouse and the other plaintiffs seek statutory damages, punitive damages, court costs, attorney fees and other relief.
Rouse is being represented by L. Dante diTrapano, D. Christopher Hedges and David H. Carriger of Calwell Luce diTrapano in Charleston and W. Jesse Forbes of Forbes Law Offices in Charleston. TAC is being represented by Emily Ford and M. David Griffith Jr. of Thomas Combs & Spann in Charleston, and The Greenbrier is represented by Ronald H. Hatfield Jr. of Bluestone Coal in Roanoke, Va.
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia case number 2:26-cv-441 (Kanawha Circuit Court case number 25-C-598)
