Your Borders Gift Card Is Now Worthless: This Is Not A Repost From 2011

You may remember that back in 2013, people who forgot to redeem their Borders gift cards sued the company’s smoldering remains and tried to get some of their money back. A federal judge shot that effort down, but the gift card lawsuit continued, and went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. No, really. However, the Supremes declined to hear the case, which means you’re stuck using those Borders gift cards to scrape ice off your car windows.

In previous battles in this legal dispute, judges concluded that the card holders had waited around too long before trying to recoup the money. The plaintiff’s lawyer in this case has argued that the delay was because Borders didn’t make much of an effort to let their customers and gift card holders know that their cards were about to be worthless.

In theory, people who somehow still have gift cards could have been paid out of the money still left to pay stray debts belonging to Borders, or about $8 million. The plaintiff’s attorney also proposed getting money that had already been paid to other creditors back, which is called a clawback.

The Supreme Court declined to hear the case–or what an attorney representing Borders called “costly and meritless litigation.”

Unredeemed Borders Gift Cards are Officially Worthless [Wall Street Journal]

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