As an after effect of the California Supreme Court ruling barring merchants from requesting the customer zip code, there has been a frenzy of lawsuits against all the big-time retailers, including Wal-Mart, Target, and Victoria’s Secret.

More than 20 class action lawsuits had been filed in the California courts since last Thursday, after the state’s high court had ruled that the state law had been violated by Williams-Sonoma, after requesting the consumer’s zip codes.  As per the Song-Beverly Credit Card Act, 1971, retailers were prohibited from recording the consumer’s ‘personal identification information’ during any of the card transactions and a penalty of up to $1,000 could be imposed per violation.  However, this is the first time, that the Supreme Court had ruled that this private information also includes the consumer’s zip code.

Reversing the orders of two lower courts, the Supreme Court has stated that its ruling would retroactively be applicable although the California appellate courts had ruled on previous occasions, that requesting zip codes were fair play by retailers.  But following this ruling many retailers who had requested and recorded the consumer zip code prior to Thursday will now be targets of class action lawsuits.

Now the court has set a new precedent, and the plaintiff’s lawyers are quick to react.  As per Jeffrey Krinsk, class action litigation firm Finkelstein & Krinsk, his firm had filed at least four separate lawsuits against Tiffany & Co., Shell, The Container Store, and Radio Shack within the past week.