Law prof James Henderson says nope in The Impropriety of Punitive Damages in Mass Torts. Here is the abstract: Punitive damages have been around for centuries in classic one-on-one tort actions and are here to stay. Mass torts, of more recent origin and not without difficulties, have matured to the point that this article is comfortable […]
Author Archives: Brian Wolfman
That's the thrust of this American Banker article (possibly behind a paywall). Here is an excerpt: Consumer groups have long denounced the influence of big banks and for-profit companies on agency rulemakings, often pointing to the number of meetings held between regulators and institutions about a proposal. Now, in an ironic twist, payday lenders and supporters of […]
That's the name of this article by consumer reporter Michelle Singletary. Here are excepts: Outstanding consumer revolving debt — mostly credit card debt — hit an all-time peak of $1.021 trillion in June, according to the Federal Reserve. This should be a scary statistic. The last time the debt level was nearly this high was in 2008, […]
So, you didn't predict that Trump would turn his sickening response to the white nationalist terror attack in Charlottesville into a faux pro-consumer attack on high prescription-drug prices? Me neither. Here goes: As this article by Glenn Thrush explains, "Merck’s chief executive, Kenneth C. Frazier, resigned from the president’s American Manufacturing Council on Monday, saying he objected to the […]
Eric Helland, Daniel Klerman, Brenda Dowling, and Alexander Kappner have written Contingent Fee Litigation in New York City. The authors were able to conduct this study because, by court rule, lawyers practicing in parts of New York City must file data about contingent-fee settlements. (I wonder why other courts don't require the same.) One thing I […]
That's the name of this article by law prof David Noll. Here is the abstract: One of the most important battles currently being fought in the United States' "arbitration wars" involves regulation by federal administrative agencies. Since 2014, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, National Labor Relations Board, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Departments of Defense, […]
That's a key issue addressed by law prof Alexandra Lahav in Mass Tort Class Actions – Past, Present, and Future. Here is the abstract: The judicial experiment with mass tort class actions was an anemic one, albeit somewhat spectacular in a few cases that have captured the academic and professional imagination. This Essay explains that the […]
According to the Department of Education, there's about $1.4 trillion in outstanding U.S. student loan debt, $137 billion of which is in default (with 1.1 million students going into default in 2016 alone). No long-term solutions are on the horizon. Meanwhile, as Danielle Douglas-Gabrielle explains in this article,"thousands of Virginia students [are] caught in a […]
The New York Times has gotten a hold of a draft of the federal government's climate science special report. The draft report is slated to be part of the National Climate Assessment, which is required by Congress every 4 years. The draft report represents the collective judgment of scientists from, among other places, 13 federal agencies. […]
Banks and credit unions may give their customers the option of overdraft "protection," which allows the customer to overdraw when (for instance) using a debit card in exchange for paying a overdraft fee. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is concerned that the fees can burden consumers and wants to ensure that overdraft fees are adequately […]