Kansas City, Mo. – September 2, 2025: Chuck Rouse and John Witten, attorneys with Rouse Frets White Goss Gentile Rhodes, P.C., obtained a federal court dismissal on behalf of an independent sales organization (ISO) in the credit card and prepaid card industry in a case where the ISO was sued by a merchant who alleged negligence and breach of fiduciary duty in failing to provide fraud protection and sought several hundred thousand dollars in damages.
The merchant alleged that an unauthorized person contacted the ISO and the co-defendant processor seeking to change the merchant acquiring bank with which the merchant was doing business. The merchant alleged that the defendants never contacted the authorized representative to determine the legitimacy of documents supplied by the unauthorized person or the authority to authorize the bank change.
Chuck and John obtained dismissal on two grounds. First, the court held that the plaintiff did not show it had personal jurisdiction over the ISO. Second, the court found that the plaintiff did not state a claim because the plaintiff did not plead facts showing a fiduciary relationship existed in the ISO context, and the negligence claim was barred by the economic loss doctrine.
About Chuck Rouse: Chuck has practiced for the past 25-plus years extensively in the area of regulatory compliance regarding payment methods, payment instruments and prepaid cards/access instruments. He is a winner of the National Law Journal’s Trailblazer Award for Cryptocurrency/Blockchain/Fintech, was selected by the payments industry as one of the Top 10 Payment Lawyers in the U.S. and as the No. 1 overall, and received the ICON Award by Missouri Lawyers Weekly. Chuck has designed compliance models for more than 500 prepaid card programs, and is an inventor on patents regarding legal technologies including methods and systems for optimizing escheat and derecognizing prepaid cards, stored value cards, credit memos, and electronic payment instruments.
About John Witten: John focuses on a wide variety of litigation, including medical malpractice defense, business litigation, construction law, labor and employment, and higher education law. John has litigation, trial, and appellate experience in state and federal courts in Missouri and Kansas, has prosecuted and defended several cases to a favorable verdict for his clients, and has successfully briefed and argued multiple appeals.
About the Payments Practice Group: The Payments Group addresses compliance of prepaid card and payment instrument programs with federal and state regulations with their work over time touching over a trillion dollars of card loads on billions of cards in hundreds of card programs in many countries. The Payments Group’s worldwide practice focuses upon compliance with regulations governing the prepaid card industry, including consumer protection laws, unclaimed property laws, anti-money laundering regulations, licensing requirements, privacy rules, fraud laws, local taxation laws, and GAAP standards.
About the Firm’s Litigation Practice Group: The firm’s litigation attorneys have more than 250 years of combined trial and appellate court experience, including business-to-business cases, individual and business cases, simple two-party disputes, and complex class action cases. The Litigation practice group has collective experience in more than 40 states and in eight federal circuits, including more than 500 bench and jury trials.
About the firm:
Rouse Frets White Goss Gentile Rhodes offers highly skilled lawyers in many practice areas with vast real world experience. Our clients benefit from blue-ribbon talent unencumbered by mega firm business models.
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