Where any doubt exists as to whether a demurrer should be sustained, it must be resolved in favor of overruling the demurrer. Our scope of review in an appeal from an order sustaining preliminary objections in the nature of a demurrer is plenary, and, after accepting as true all material facts set forth in the complaint as well as all inferences reasonably deducible therefrom, we determine whether, on the facts averred, the law precludes with certainty a recovery by plaintiff.First Union Nat'l Bank of South Carolina, 837 F. Citibank (South Dakota) N.A., supra Ament v. Citibank (South Dakota) N.A., supra Hill v. Other courts which have considered this issue have uniformly reached the same result.Under this holding, a national bank can "export" its home state's favorable interest laws to transactions with out-of-state borrowers and to the extent the laws of the borrowers' states are in opposition, they have been pre-empted. This principle, the court held, was not annulled when borrowers lived in another state whose laws allowed lower interest rates. Section 85 of the National Bank Act, therefore, provided that a national bank could charge interest on any loan to the extent allowed in the state in which the bank was located. In order to achieve this goal, the Act authorized a national bank to charge the same interest that was available to the most favored lender in the bank's home state. In so doing, the Court examined the legislative purpose of the National Bank Act, which, it said, was to give a national bank an advantage over state competitors.In any event, since the Greenwood Court failed to reveal the "persuasive evidence" upon which it relied to avoid the "ordinary meaning" of the term "interest", we are simply unable to find that Congress, when it used the phrase "interest at the rate" in enacting Section 85 of the National Bank Act, intended anything other than the ordinary and popular meaning of the word "interest", which a person of average intelligence and experience would understand.While we agree that the express language of the National Bank Act preempts any attempt by a state legislature to regulate the rate of interest which may be charged by a national bank located, for purposes of federal law, in another state, we are not persuaded that all Pennsylvania consumer protection laws which purport to prohibit fees and contingent default charges, such as those at issue in the instant case, have been preempted by the provisions of the National Bank Act governing the rate of interest to be charged by national banks. Appellee contends that all state usury and consumer protection laws which purport to regulate any fees which may be charged by a national bank in connection with a loan, so long as they are characterized as interest by a law of the state in which the bank is "located", have been expressly preempted by this section of the National Bank Act.Having, in this footnote, tamed the advocate, the task of analysis and decision resumes. 51 (Putnam Publishing Group 1969) - one supposes that professional courtesy precluded his allusion to the banker. Don Corleone once rasped: "A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.", Mario Puzo, The Godfather p.
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