In Oliver v. Navy Federal Credit Union, decided today, the Fourth Circuit clarified both the procedure and substantive standards that govern when defendants ask a court to deny class certification before discovery. Oliver was a putative class action challenging Navy Federal’s underwriting process for loan applicants as racially discriminatory. Navy Federal moved to dismiss under Rule […]
Here, at Ballard Spahr’s Consumer Financial Law Monitor podcast. The authors are Pamela Foohey of Georgia, Robert M. Lawless of Illinois College of Law and Deborah Thorne, Professor of Sociology at the University of Idaho, and the book is about who seeks bankruptcy and what drives them to do so. Warning: you will order the […]
Angela Littwin of Texas, Adrienne Adams of Michigan State University, and Angie Kennedy, also of Michigan State have written Ineffective Relief for Coerced Debt: The Failure of Divorce and Debtor-Creditor Law to Address Debt Created by Domestic Violence. Here’s the abstract: Coerced debt occurs when the abusive partner in a relationship characterized by domestic violence (DV) […]
In October, I posted about the Fifth Circuit’s curious grant of rehearing en banc in a challenge to the Department of Transportation’s 2024 Rule requiring airlines to disclose ancillary fees. The panel had left a stay of the rule in place, directing the agency to address certain notice and comment issues on remand–but at the […]
Yesterday, the California Supreme Court issued a decision in Fuentes v. Empire Nissan, in which it addressed how the “tiny and unreadable print” in which a contract (here, an arbitration agreement) is printed plays into a court’s unconscionability analysis. The court held “that a contract’s format generally is irrelevant to the substantive unconscionability analysis, which […]
Go to Ballard Spahr’s Consumer Finance Monitor podcast.
President Trump is no friend of consumer arbitration. As longtime readers of the blog know, during his first term, Trump signed the Congressional Review Act resolution blocking the CFPB’s arbitration rule from going into effect. So it is intriguing to see Trump sue JPMorgan Chase over the bank’s debanking him when his contract with the […]
Myriam E. Gilles, now of Northwestern, has written Arbitration In Name Only. Here’s the abstract: Modern arbitration clauses hide a dirty secret: many aren’t arbitration at all. They masquerade as mutual commitments to fair and efficient private dispute resolution but, in truth, are mere imitations of genuine arbitration provisions. Some reserve for the drafter the power […]
Here (behind paywall but you get one article for free, and it should also turn up on Lexis soon). Excerpt: We are angry because government officials have shot an American without justification. We are angry because Americans of color have been profiled. * * * We are angry because creating fear seems itself to be […]
Here in a Maryland Daily Record editorial (behind a paywall but available on Lexis). Here’s an excerpt (disclosure: I am on the editorial board): Some consumers, enticed by BNPL, become overcommitted and can’t meet their financial obligations. You might think BNPL providers would suffer when consumers are in that situation, but the BNPL companies have […]