Here’s the latest announcement: The UC Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice and the Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana are proud to present the fourteenth biennial international Teaching Consumer Law Conference. We are also excited to announce that this conference will constitute the first-ever North American (and Caribbean/Central American) […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
by Brandon Ballou. It’s available here. Ballou also has a guest essay in the Times, He Signed Away His Right to Sue by Subscribing to Disney+. Excerpt from the essay: * * * In small claims courts, consumers win as often as 89 percent of the time. Before the two leading U.S. arbitration providers, consumers […]
So Amanda Bronstad reports at Law.com in Federal Roundup Judge Refuses to Step Into ‘Mind-Boggling’ $7.25B Class Settlement. Excerpt: [Judge] Chhabria said, “You have a meeting with the judge on the day you filed it, a prearranged meeting with the judge on the day you filed it. You say it was in open court, but it […]
On May 14 – 15 at George Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School’s Institute for Consumer Financial Choice. More information here. Here’s some of what appears there: The Future of Consumer Financial Protection: A Two-Day FTC/ICFC Colloquium on the 5th Anniversary of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law The first afternoon’s registration begins at 11:45 and a […]
Story here. It was in Canada. I suppose it was inevitable given how many others have relied on AI-hallucinated citations without checking. I suspect it has happened in the US as well, though perhaps without anyone knowing. Of course, if arbitrators don’t write opinions but merely ask AI questions and don’t verify the cites, no […]
Here are the speakers scheduled to appear at the moment: Adelina Acuña (UC Berkeley) Craig Cowie (University of Montana) Prentiss Cox (University of Minnesota Law School) Lesley Fair (George Washington University) Jeff Gentes (Yale Law School) Ryan Marquez (University of Houston Law Center) Ted Mermin (UC Berkeley) Andy Milz (Temple University Beasley School of Law) Robert Murphy (University of Virginia School of Law) James […]
Text available here. It’s believed to be the first law banning surveillance pricing in the country (New York has a law requiring that any use of algorithmic pricing be disclosed). The law is limited to larger grocery stores and delivery services. It follows a December story by Consumer Reports that Instacart was using surveillance pricing […]
At Ballard Spahr’s Consumer Finance Monitor podcast. Levine, the former director of the FTC’s Consumer Protection Bureau, is now the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, where he is likely to serve as a model for other state and local regulators. .
Here. New § 1002.6 provides in part: ECOA “does not provide that the ‘effects test’ applies for determining whether there is discrimination in violation of the Act.” The regulation also purports to define discouragement and covers special purpose credit programs. I wonder how long before a court challenge is filed.
Tamar Kricheli-Katz of Tel Aviv University and Florencia Marotta-Wurgler of NYU have written The Distributional Costs of Effective Consumer Regulation. Here’s the abstract: Disclosure is a cornerstone of consumer protection regulation, yet little is known about its differential effects across consumers. We study how disclosure format influences decision-making across the income distribution, drawing on insights from […]