I don't mean to be antagonistic, but I did read the articles I linked..
Quote:
Lord & Taylor, for instance, never follows up civil-demand letters by suing suspected shoplifters, its loss-prevention manager said in deposition about a year ago, citing the cost of going to court. Lord & Taylor collected about $1 million in civil recovery from suspected shoplifters in a recent year, up from $850,000 the year before, the official testified.
...
Civil recovery has rarely faced legal challenge. A 1993 challenge to Ohio's civil-recovery process cited the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. A U.S. magistrate said that law didn't apply because civil recovery wasn't an effort to collect a debt but "a settlement offer for potential tort liability."
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It really doesn't seem that they think what they're doing is illegal; quite the contrary. They're defending it as a chance to settle a *potential* tort liability; if someone doesn't pay, they're collecting a payment without bringing a suit at all. And if someone refuses to pay, they can take them to collections for failure to pay a debt - again, without suit.