CONCORD – A Merrimack steakhouse owned by well-known chef and restaurateur Michael Buckley may have to give out $14 gift cards to at least 20,000 people if a judge accepts a settlement involving a Massachusetts woman who says the restaurant’s point-of-sale machines put her credit cards at risk by not hiding the expiration date on a receipt.

The proposed settlement was filed in U.S. District Court in Concord between Buckley’s Great Steaks Inc. and Margaret Foley, a Massachusetts woman who filed the court case after eating at the restaurant in November 2013.

It has yet to be reviewed by Judge Landya McCafferty , who must decide among other things whether this case should be a class-action suit, in which one ruling applies to a large number of unnamed defendants.

At the maximum, the settlement could cost about $540,000.

Buckley and wife Sarah are in Nashua known for opening Michael Timothy’s, which is now MT Local, and Surf restaurants.

Foley, of Millis, Mass., filed the suit at U.S. District Court in February 2014, accusing the restaurant of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act.

The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, which went into effect in 2006, requires merchants to redact all but five digits of a credit card number and the card’s expiration date. The idea is that consumers’ credit card information is better protected from would-be identity thieves, according to Foley’s suit.

The suit claims Buckley’s Great Steaks “willfully” ignored those rules despite bulletins and notices issued to their customers by major credit card companies. The company denied that, and Buckley’s lawyer, David Pinsonneault of Winer and Bennett in Nashua, said no circumstances of identity theft have been identified.

The two sides agreed that the restaurant and Michael Timothy’s Dining Group Inc. would pay between $55,000 and $77,000 in attorney fees plus $3,000 to Foley, as well as give $14 gift cards to as many as 32,986 people who dined there during the time that the machines in question were used. Buckley estimates that fewer than 20,000 people were involved after multiple visits by the same person are discounted.

The gift cards would expire after one year.

As part of the proposed settlement, unpaid money requested by the lawyers would be donated to the Nashua Children’s Home. Both parties also agree not to sue each other.

There is no exact timetable attached to the legal proceedings, although Pinsonneault said that if all goes as quickly as possible, the agreement could be moving forward in as little as a month.

The agreement also includes a stipulation that the restaurant doesn’t admit to any actual wrongdoing.

David Brooks can be reached at 594-6531, dbrooks@nashuatelegraph.com or @GraniteGeek.