Though consumer arbitration proponents and courts often justify pre-dispute mandatory arbitration (PDMA) through the language of consent — that consumers contract with corporations freely and knowingly — opponents of PDMA understand that PDMA is forced down consumers' throats. With these two visions of arbitration in mind, you may want to read two new issue papers […]
Author Archives: Brian Wolfman
Our readers may be interested in this story by Michael Scarcella on the contentious oral argument today before the Supreme Court in Epic Systems v. Lewis (and two cases consolidated with it), perhaps one of the most important arbitration cases the Court has ever heard. The question presented by one of the pro-arbitration parties is Whether an agreement that […]
“This must stop. It is positively infuriating that my colleagues in Congress are so afraid of the gun industry that they pretend there aren’t public policy responses to this epidemic. There are, and the thoughts and prayers of politicians are cruelly hollow if they are paired with legislative indifference. It’s time for Congress to get […]
Here and here. And if want to see who will likely benefit from Trump's proposed changes, click on the chart below.
Those are topics of Justifying Class Action Limits: Parsing the Debates over Ascertainability and Cy Pres by law prof Robert Bone. Here's the abstract: The federal class action has lost its way. It was created about fifty years ago in a major revision to Rule 23 that envisioned a functional aggregation device aimed at promoting litigation efficiency […]
Quoting from the CFPB's press release issued yesterday: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released the results of a first-of-its-kind national survey on the financial well-being of U.S. consumers that showed that more than 40 percent of U.S. adults struggle to make ends meet. The survey provides measurements and insights on the financial well-being of specific […]
The National Law Journal has published this debate/discussion between corporate litigator (and sometimes lawyer for the Chamber of Commerce lawyer) Andy Pincus and this blog's Deepak Gupta. (Possibly behind a paywall.)
In Class Actions in the Era of Trump: Trends and Developments in Class Certification and Related Issues, law profs Jack Coffee and Alexi Lahav just that. Here's the abstract: In this memorandum prepared for the Annual ABA National Institute on Class Actions, Professors Coffee and Lahav review and assess developments in class certification over recent years, […]
Jeff noted a few days ago that a credit union had filed a class action against Equifax. This article (possibly behind a paywall) by Amanda Bronstad discusses that class action some detail, plus another as well. Here's an excerpt: Summit Credit Union in Madison, Wisconsin, has brought a class action on behalf of all credit unions that have had to […]
Health reporter Phil Galewitz explains that The Trump Administration plans to shut down the federal health insurance exchange for 12 hours during all but one Sunday in the upcoming Obamacare open enrollment season. The shutdown will occur from midnight until noon every Sunday except Dec. 10. The Department of Health and Human Services will also shut down the federal […]