------- Forwarded Message Millennium bomb: Supplier sued over cash registers MONDAY AUGUST 18 1997 By Christopher Adams in London A small supermarket owner in the US is suing a cash register supplier for allegedly providing computerised tills that cannot recognise the year 2000. The lawsuit is believed to be the first of its kind. If it is successful, it could set a precedent with dangerous consequences for the insurance industry. Mark Yarsike, a supermarket owner in Detroit, is suing Tec-America, the Atlanta-based supplier of cash registers, because he says credit cards that expire after 2000 cause the tills to shut down. The lawsuit has wide implications for the insurance industry as suppliers may be forced to make claims on insurance policies covering them against the failure of their products to cope with the date change. Legal experts say insurers might be inundated with claims over the so-called "millennium bomb", leaving them vulnerable to losses that could run to billions of pounds. The millennium bomb is expected to cause widespread chaos because most computers recognise only the last two digits of a year and will treat dates beyond 1999 as referring to the 1900s. Should litigation escalate, the cost of claims could be inflated by damages and legal fees. Mr Yarsike owns three Produce Paradise supermarkets in Detroit. He says the cash registers have failed more than 150 times in two years, causing chaos in his stores and losing him hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mr Yarsike says his patience with Tec-America finally snapped two weeks ago. He says that each time credit cards expiring after 2000 cause cash resisters to shut down, Tec-America comes to fix the problem. But within hours, the registers fail again. "It's gotten pretty wild in here. A lot of customers walk out upset and embarrassed. When the card zips through and the modem packs up, everybody looks at that one customer and says, 'Wow! What did she do?'. "How would you like to have 300 people in your store and the cash registers don't work with a 10-hour day ahead of you?" Mr Yarsike wants Tec-America to put in a replacement system. He spent $150,000 on the fleet of registers for his stores and says it would cost him another $35,000 for new equipment. Tec-America denied it was to blame for the shutdown of the cash registers. It said responsibility lay with the credit card industry, which was forced several years ago to establish a format for swapping data that would recognise the year 2000. The industry's efforts, however, were not completed until April. - ------- End of Forwarded Message ------- End of Forwarded Message