LexisNexis (October 26, 2018, 12:04 PM EDT) -- On August 13, the California Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the interest rate on a consumer loan in California can be deemed illegally high under the common-law “unconscionability” doctrine, even if the loan was not subject to the state’s statutory usury cap. De La Torre v. CashCall, Inc., 2018 Cal. LEXIS 5749 (Cal. 2018). Currently, California law sets interest rate caps only on consumer loans of less than $2,500. The defendant in this case, CashCall, Inc., is a nonbank lender of consumer loans to high-risk borrowers. One of CashCall’s signature products was an unsecured $2,600 loan, payable over a 42-month period, and carrying an annual percentage rate of either 96 percent or, later in the class period, 135 percent. The plaintiffs in this case obtained such loans from CashCall and alleged that the high interest rates on these loans violated California’s Unfair Competition Law (UCL). The plaintiffs argued that these high interest rates made such loans unconscionable (and thus unlawful) under the UCL, even though the loans were not subject to the statutory cap because the $2600 principal amount exceeded the $2500 threshold....