Consumer law was a big campaign issue for a while in the wake of the Great Recession, and it may be again next year. AP’s Will Weissert has the story in an article headlined Biden and House Democrats hope to make curbing ‘junk fees’ a winning issue in 2024.
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
Yonathan A. Arbel of Alabama and Samuel Becher of the Victoria University of Wellington have written How Smart are Smart Readers? LLMs and the Future of the No-Reading Problem. Here’s the abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) can be used to summarize and simplify complex texts. In this study, we investigate the extent to which state-of-the-art models […]
Ballard Spahr’s Alan Kaplinsky interviewed Arthur E. Wilmarth, Professor Emeritus at GW, about crypto and its regulation at this week’s episode of the Consumer Finance Monitor podcast. I learned some things from the discussion that I plan to incorporate in my Payments Systems class next spring. Some of the discussion drew on Professor Wilmarth’s forthcoming […]
Here. Entries are due November 1. There’s a student category and a professional category.
Claire Johnson Raba of the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law and California, Irvine has written One-Sided Litigation: Lessons from Civil Docket Data in California Debt Collection Lawsuits. Here’s the abstract: A study by Claire Johnson Raba, a researcher with the Debt Collection Lab, shows that debt cases are an increasing burden on consumers and […]
Last month, the FTC updated its Endorsements Guide. The Guide’s definition of clear and conspicuous is particularly interesting. The Guide states: (f) For purposes of this part, “clear and conspicuous” means that a disclosure is difficult to miss ( i.e., easily noticeable) and easily understandable by ordinary consumers. * * * In any communication using […]
Regular readers of the blog will recall that after the CFPB announced that it interpreted its power to proscribe unfair practices as reaching discriminatory conduct, the Chamber of Commerce and various banking trade organizations sued the Bureau in the Eastern District of Texas (it’s always Texas) challenging the Bureau’s determination. Both sides later moved for […]
NBC has a report here. This time, the accounts are not on behalf of existing account holders but seem to involve synthetic identity fraud.
I am thrilled to report that I have been named the Michael Millemann Professor of Consumer Protection Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. Michael Millemann is a long time Maryland faculty member who has been a leader in many areas of the law, including consumer law, and it’s an […]
Maria Glover of Georgetown has written Recent Developments in Mandatory Arbitration Warfare: Winners and Losers (So Far) in Mass Arbitration, 100 Washington University Law Review (2023). Here’s the abstract: Mass arbitration has sent shock waves through the civil justice system and unnerved the defense bar. To see how quickly and dramatically this phenomenon has entered […]