Susan Grant at the Consumer Federation of America has written A Credit Reporting Agency You Probably Never Heard Of. Here's a key excerpt: If you have placed freezes on your credit files at Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, no one can fraudulently open a new account pretending to be you, right? Not exactly. Freezing your files at […]
Author Archives: Brian Wolfman
That's the name of this article by Devin Leonard and Elizabeth Dexheimer. A key passage sets out what Mulvaney has done already and his vision for the agency: Six months into his tenure, Mulvaney is doing everything he can to transform the CFPB from a regulatory crown jewel of liberals into one that he says follows the […]
Ben White at Politico has written this piece on surging gas prices and whether the cost to consumers is gobbling up gains, if any, to the middle class from the tax cut. Here's an excerpt: President Donald Trump is hoping a wave of tax-cut-fueled economic euphoria will boost his approval ratings and his party’s political fortunes this fall. A […]
This NY Times article by Stacy Cowley and Emily Flitter explains that A federal regulator on Wednesday encouraged banks to offer small, short-term loans to people in need of emergency cash, the Trump administration’s latest relaxation of banking regulations and a rare moment of common ground with consumer groups that oppose payday lending. The Office of […]
Read Steven Lane's piece in The Hill entitled Trump signs repeal of auto-loan policy that targeted racial bias. Acting CFPB director Mick Mulvaney is pleased. In a press release issued today, Mulvaney "thanks the President and the Congress" for nixing the CFPB's policy because the agency had acted "outside of federal statutes." "As an executive agency," Mulvaney says, "we […]
Following up on yesterday's post on whether Congress will demand disclosure of plaintiffs'-side outside litigation funding in class actions and MDLs, Amanda Bronstad has this piece collecting various opinions from litigators, experts, and the like on the topic more generally.
Many of our readers are consumer class-action litigators or interested in litigation more generally. So I thought it was worth mentioning Senator Chuck Grassley's legislation, introduced last week, that would require disclosure of outside litigation funding in multi-district litigation and in class actions generally (that is, in class actions both inside and outside multi-district litigation). […]
The Sixth Circuit today decided Health One Medical Center v. Mohawk, a mighty strange case under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (the federal anti-junk-fax statute). The first paragraph of Judge Kethledge's opinion sums it up: Some questions seem to arise only in class-action lawsuits. Here, a seller of prescription drugs sent junk faxes to various medical […]
That's the topic of Consumer Remedies for Civil Rights by law prof Kate Elengold. Here's the abstract: This article considers whether the consumer protection doctrine offers a more promising avenue to remedying certain forms of discrimination than the anti-discrimination doctrine. Using a housing discrimination story as a case study, it breaks down the doctrinal trade-offs between seeking […]
The Supreme Court today granted cert in Frank v. Gaos, No. 17-961, concerning the validity of a cy pres award in a consumer class action against Google. The cert petition, response, reply, and amicus briefs are here. The question presented is Whether, or in what circumstances, a cy pres award of class action proceeds that provides […]