Coop Spends $8000 to Comply With Mass. Cash Register Law

The Harvard Coop, under threat of a law suit by a Harvard Law student, paid $8000 this summer to adapt its cash registers to comply with a Massachusetts law requiring that the registers show price totals to customers.

Ira Nerken a third-year Law student, said last week he decided to take action against the Coop last March when he became enraged because the Coop had installed new cash registers that did not show price totals.

He said he then found a 1971 Massachusetts General Law that said specifically that cash registers must show purchase totals or their owners will be fined $50.

"I went to the Coop and told them they were in violation of the law," Nerkin said. He said he gave the store 30 days to comply or he would take the matter to court.

About 20 days later Nerkin received a call from Howard W. Davis, general manager of the Coop, saying that the Coop was looking into the matter.

The Coop then changed the position of as many registers as possible so customers could see the totals and ordered digital adapters at $350 each for the 15 registers that could not be re-positioned.

Money

"We spent a considerable amount of time and money just trying to please Nerkin," Davis said this week. "We took it seriously, examined every location, and even consulted the man who was attorney general when the law was passed. We are not now in violation of the law."

Louis Loss, Cromwell Professor of Law who was retained by the Coop, said this week that the Coop "just didn't know about the law." He said he felt that the cash register company, National Cash Register (NCR), from which the Coop bought the machines, should have known about the law before it sold the machines to the store.

"But nobody's brought any action and we are now in compliance" Loss said.

Davis said the NCR refused to help pay for the adapters.

Nerken called the case "The classic bit of a student deciding to do something about consumer affairs and finding the law tailor-made to work with."

"It was a case of an unclear and deceptive trade practice," Nerken said.

Nerken, who worked this summer at the Federal Trade Commission, said, "There is a whole series of very interesting things you can do," when someone is in violation of trade laws.

"The machines are a disgrace," Nerken said. "It is amazing that the store was able not to notice such a serious defect in the machines before purchasing them," he added.

Davis said the legal matters are not as clear "as Nerken mades them out to be." He said the registers fell into a "gray area" of the law, adding the "Nerken is obsessed with the issue."