by Jeff Sovern As has been widely reported, Equifax waited about six weeks to disclose its breach, which makes me wonder if we would ever have learned about the breach if the laws requiring disclosures of breaches didn’t exist. And in recent years, Equifax has lobbied aggressively on breach laws. All this left me curious […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
Samuel Issacharoff of NYU has written Collective Action and Class Action, in THE CLASS ACTION EFFECT: FROM THE LEGISLATOR’S IMAGINATION TO TODAY’S USES AND PRACTICES, (Catherine Piché, ed., Éditions Yvon Blais, 2018 Forthcoming). Here is the abstract: Over the past 25 years, class actions have emerged as a central feature of Canadian law. The conceptual […]
Pat Akey of the University of Toronto – Rotman School of Management, Rawley Heimer of the Boston College – Department of Finance, and Stefan Lewellen of the London Business School have written Politicizing Consumer Credit. Here's the abstract: Using proprietary credit bureau data, we find that consumers’ access to credit decreases by 4.5 percent–8 percent […]
by Jeff Sovern The ABA Banking Journal (that's the banking ABA, not the lawyers' ABA) has the story here. Except: The OCC has conducted a study finding that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s arbitration rule is likely to increase the cost of credit by about 25 percent once lenders factor in the cost of class action litigation, […]
by Jeff Sovern The Hill has a story about the forthcoming speech. Excerpt from the story: President Trump plans to give a speech at the White House next week on his efforts to roll back federal regulations. “The President will be making remarks in the morning highlighting his administration’s efforts to eliminate excessive, job-killing […]
Jeffrey H. Dasteel of UCLA has written CONSUMER CLICK ARBITRATION: A REVIEW OF ONLINE CONSUMER ARBITRATION AGREEMENTS, 9 Arbitration Law Review 1 (2017). Here is an excerpt from the conclusion: Our review of websites with arbitration clauses, in-store transactions for retailers with brick and mortar outlets and online sales, and prior studies on whether online consumers […]
by Jeff Sovern Why this week? Deepak Gupta speculated on Twitter: Why is GOP pushing this vote now? Possibly to get ahead of hearings next week at which Equifax and Wells Fargo execs will have to testify. But if that's true, that means that arbitration supporters expect that those hearings will generate opposition to arbitration. […]
The letter is here. Marketwatch has a report headlined 400 college professors say you should be able to sue Equifax and other financial institutions. Excerpt from the report: The professors are sending the letter Monday because it is Sept. 25, the anniversary of when Congress passed the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1791, which states: […]
by Jeff Sovern Reuters has a report here. Excerpt: The U.S. consumer finance watchdog agency is expected to punish Equifax for its cyber breach with the wide-ranging powers it has used with Wall Street, former agency officials and lawyers said this week. The credit-reporting company is subject to five federal laws governing listed companies, the […]
by Jeff Sovern A frequent claim by class action critics is that we don’t need class actions because we have regulators. For example. Alan Kaplinsky recently tweeted that class actions were not needed in the wake of the Equifax scandal because the CFPB is expected to act. But the truth is we need both regulators […]