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Consumer Law Keyed to Whaley, 9th Ed.
Bright v. Ball Memorial Hospital Association
Citation:
616 F.2d 328 (1980)Facts
Ball Memorial Hospital is a not-for-profit Indiana hospital that admits all patients regardless of ability to pay. Upon admission, inpatients receive an Initial Credit Disclosure Statement requesting payment at discharge but offering installment payment options with a ¾% monthly finance charge if necessary. Patients not arranging payment receive a series of billing statements on days four, eighteen, forty-eight, sixty-two, seventy-six, and ninety after discharge, with increasingly urgent payment demands. Beginning on day forty-eight, the hospital assesses a ¾% monthly charge on unpaid balances or a fifty-cent handling charge, whichever is greater. Appellant Bright was hospitalized in July 1977, received billing statements and a coupon book, made oral payment agreements in November 1977 for fifteen and twenty dollars monthly, paid thirty dollars in March 1978, then agreed to pay fifteen dollars monthly for twenty-four months but made no further payments. Appellant Barber received outpatient services, received billing statements with handling charges, never reached payment agreements, and had her accounts referred to collection agencies. Both appellants sued claiming Truth in Lending Act violations.
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