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Class action against Pacer claims inflated fees

Via Top Class Actions: “A class action lawsuit has been filed accusing the Public Access to Courts Electronic Records system (PACER)—the online database created and run by the U.S. government to allow access to federal court records—of systematically overcharging its customers. The PACER system normally charges 10 cents ($0.10) per page to view a document, up to a maximum of $3.00 per document. However, the class action lawsuit alleges that when a user accesses a document as HTML text on a webpage, “PACER artificially inflates the number of bytes in each extracted page, counting some of those bytes five times instead of just once.” Those additional fees for extra pages can add up to large sums of money, according to the PACER overcharge class action lawsuit. Plaintiff Bryndon Fisher claims that in the past two years, he has paid $109.40 to PACER for court records. Fisher alleges that he should have paid only $72.40 for those records, based on their actual number of pages.”

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