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Comment by Mathnerd314 | Hacker News Reader

> nor does this Act apply to the procurement of an automated valuation model. "Automated valuation model" means an automated system that is used to derive a property value through the use of publicly available property records and various analytic methodologies such as comparable sales prices, home characteristics, and historical home price appreciations.

If that sentence applies, I don't think they really have a case...

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Good point. But what does "procurement" mean in this context? The plain meaning is "obtain", but that doesn't really make sense here. The word isn't used elsewhere in this document but is presumably defined somewhere.

If it is interpreted to mean "use", then the case is a loser as you say. But I wouldn't want to be the lawyer tasked with arguing to the judge that "the legislature meant 'use' but decided to say 'procurement' instead".

I'm not sure I understand your point. By visting the website one is procuring the estimate through an automated model in return for the ads and tracking you agree to by visting. Legal language is straight forward in this case.

Procuring an estimate produced by an automated valuation model is not quite the same thing as procuring an automated valuation model.

Exactly. It doesn't really make sense to talk about procurement of an automated valuation model, but that is what the statute seems to say.

It does because in this sense the model is the result of the automated valuation. You are thinking too much like a programmer when you think the automated valuation model is the model being procured.

Generally in law you use a law dictionary, e.g. http://thelawdictionary.org/procurement/, which defines it as "the entire process of purchasing goods". "Entire" there suggests a broad term, hence interpreted inclusively in the context it appears. So in context it's probably something like "commercial use". But there are other questions of applicability, e.g. whether the legislature intended that sentence to only apply to financial loan decisions. It seems like there's no indicator of legislative intent on the original bill https://openstates.org/il/bills/96th/HB1015/, hence it would probably be the plain meaning as an independent clause, but IANAL...

In my experience (7 years as a corporate lawyer), a law dictionary would only be consulted for legal terms of art, which "procurement" is not. For most terms, a regular dictionary definition is used.

At any rate, I don't see how the definition cited would clear up the matter. It's a big leap from "the entire process of purchasing goods" to "commercial use". Like "use", which I discuss above, "commercial use" is a common term of art, and it would be strange to say "procurement" if what you mean is "commercial use".

Well, I was trying to shift the focus to "automated valuation model". That's used in other places and seems to be a term of the art in finance, e.g. this Kansas consumer bill: http://kslegislature.com/li_2016/b2015_16/measures/documents... Hence Zillow probably doesn't qualify, since it doesn't do loans or banking.

But the courts are so random; I'm guessing this case will be determined primarily by how much the judge that gets assigned likes technology. It'll be interesting to follow up on.

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