Guest post by Daniel Colbert (2L, Georgetown Law) How does the shutdown affect consumers? The short answer is that the shutdown likely won’t hurt consumers as much as it will hurt government employees, Head Start students, and panda-cam enthusiasts, but, still, it will put a significant damper on the government’s ability to protect consumers. Here […]
Author Archives: Brian Wolfman
A little while ago Allison posted on the Third Circuit's recent decision in Carrera v. Bayer, explaining that the court … held that, if the defendant does not have purchase records, a consumer class action cannot be certified based on sworn customer affidavits. The court stated the "rigorous analysis" requirement for class certification "appl[ies] to […]
by Brian Wolfman We have posted (for instance, here and here) about efforts to push forward in various ways with the massive Title VII employment disrimination class action thrown out by the Supreme Court in Wal-Mart v. Dukes on the ground that the nationwide class did not meet the requirements of the federal class-action rule […]
Many low-income people don't have bank accounts and have to pay fees and incur other costs to get access to their money. Lisa Servon at The Atlantic has written"The Real Reason the Poor Go Without Bank Accounts." Read the whole thing and take a look right now at Servon's concluding paragraph: The banking industry needs […]
We posted late last year about a Second Circuit decision that circumscribed the government's authority to criminalize off-label prescription-drug promotion on First Amendment grounds. Now, law professor Christopher Robertson has written "When Truth Cannot Be Presumed: The Regulation of Drug Promotion Under an Expanding First Amendment," which discusses the issue. Here is the abstract: The Food, […]
Yesterday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued this order requiring Chase Bank and JPMorgan Chase Bank to refund around $321 million to consumers who were charged on their credit cards for add-on services that they did not receive. That's right, the CFPB found that these banks charged for things that their customers just did […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has just launched this website filled with data provided by financial institutions under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), which requires those institutions to report and publicly disclose information about mortgages. HMDA became law in 1975 and is implemented through Regulation C. In 2009, the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation […]
After the Supreme Court's rulings in American Express v. Italian Colors and AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, why wouldn't an employer, whenever possible, force its employees into individual arbitrations over employment disputes through adhesive arbitration clauses? At least, those rulings generally should allow private, non-unionized employers to avoid class dispute resolution (whether in court or before […]
by Brian Wolfman As we've reported in the past (for instance, here), states with governors and/or legislatures who don't like the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have threatened not to participate in the Act's Medicaid expansion (which the Supreme Court said could not be forced on the states by Congress under the Constitution's "Spending Clause"). As […]
That's the name of this article by law professor Frank Pasquale. Here is the abstract: A bad credit score may cost a borrower tens of thousands of dollars, but it is not clear how it is calculated. The formula is a trade secret, immune from scrutiny. Lenders are moving beyond scoring to “credit analytics,” which […]