New York’s General Business Law section 399-zzz, enacted in 2011, prohibits businesses from charging extra fees to pay by mail or to receive a billing statement — but does not prohibit such businesses from ” offering consumers a credit or other incentive to elect a specific payment or billing option.” Customers of TD Bank sued […]
Author Archives: Adam Pulver
Touting it as containing “the strongest protections in the country against debt collector harassment,” New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) yesterday published its “Stopping Harassment and Intimidation and Ensuring Lawful Debt (SHIELD) Collection Rule.” According to DCWP, the rule “allow[s] New Yorkers to dispute their debt at any time, further limiting […]
As part of its campaign to make America cruel again, the Trump Administration is reportedly considering an executive order that would require banks to verify citizenship information of current and future customers. The reports do not indicate the legal authority that the Administration would rely upon, or what problem this requirement would be addressing. Such […]
Several states have adopted laws creating Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing systems for certain residential energy and home improvement projects. Under these programs, a homeowner borrows money to finance the project, and the loan is repaid through an assessment on the homeowner’s property tax bill. The lender’s lien generally has priority over mortgage liens, […]
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 […]
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 […]
There are many decisions addressing whether website interactions constitute a valid and binding contract–frequently, one to arbitrate. Under California law, “scrollwrap” or “clickwrap” offers, which require a user to affirmatively agree to terms and conditions after being presented with them, are are generally held to create enforceable contracts. On the other hand, “browsewrap” offers, where […]
A few weeks ago, I shared that the Department of Education had planned to, for the first time since 2020, resume wage garnishments and other involuntary collections on federal student loans. Today, though, the Department announced a reversal of course, stating it would delay collections efforts while it “implement[s] major student loan repayment reforms under […]
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act prohibits “mak[ing] any call . . . using . . . an artificial or prerecorded voice . . . to any telephone number assigned to a . . . cellular telephone service,” or “initiat[ing] any telephone call to any residential telephone line using an artificial or prerecorded voice to deliver […]