According to her complaint, Martino had three accounts with AAFCU, one in her name only and two joint accounts with her children. She opened a credit card with AAFCU in 2007. In May 2012, AAFCU withdrew funds from all three accounts to pay off the credit card after she failed to pay it.

She filed three counts of individual and class claims against AAFCU: Violation of the MCCCDA, declaratory judgment seeking a declaration that AAFCU's practices were in violation of the MCCCDA and violation of Chapter 93A 2 and 9 through violations of the MCCCDA and TILA.

District judge Douglas P. Woodlock granted her motion for a summary judgment on liability last week and denied AAFCU's cross-motion for a summary judgment.

The judge ordered both parties to submit a proposal by Sept. 16 to resolve the case because liability was established.

AAFCU did not dispute that it removed the funds to pay the credit card, but claimed that Martino's usage of the credit card was her acceptance of the agreement terms that stated AAFCU could do so if needed.

Martino argued that when she signed a pre-approval letter for the credit card, the pre-approval acceptance certificate did not indicate contain any language about security interest.

"While the certificate included language that she was accepting the terms and conditions of the agreement, the agreement was not provided at the time that Martino signed the certificate and therefore could not have been reviewed at the time the certificate was signed," the judge wrote in his order. "The agreement arrived later by mail, simultaneously with an activated, usable credit card. The agreement is the only document that mentions a security interest. The agreement did not have any space for Martino to initial or sign and did not require Martino to acknowledge in any way receipt of or agreement to the terms once she had received them."

Martino argued that was not sufficient to create a consensual security interest in her depository accounts. AAFCU argued that her use of the credit card satisfied the requirements of TILA and MCCCDA, and that the pre-approval certificate clearly stated she was agreeing to terms she had not yet seen.

While the text on the agreement regarding security interest was separated from the rest of the text by a box and printed in bold, the judge said the text on the certificate which stated that use of the card was acceptance of the not-yet-provided agreement was "extremely small and the text about acceptance of the agreement is not separated from the other text in any way. The relevant text has the quality of prototypical contract boilerplate language. More importantly, the agreement itself was not provided at the time that Martino signed the certificate, so it is impossible that Martino could have understood the full import of what she was signing."