In an effort to crack down on credit card fraud, Congress passed a law in 2003 limiting merchant receipts to five digits of a customer’s credit card number or the expiration date, but not both.

Many companies across America complied. But due to some confusion in the law, a number of businesses started printing receipts with both the truncated numbers and the expiration dates.

Even though experts testified in Congress that that is not enough to steal a card or an identity, the glitch opened hundreds of businesses’ cash registers to lawsuits.

On Tuesday, President Bush signed bipartisan legislation introduced by Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and Tim Mahoney, D-Fla., that removes statutory damages for the mistake, thereby removing the incentive for class action lawsuits.

How does this help consumers? “The consumers,” Bachmann said, “pay the lawyers’ bills in the form of higher prices.”