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Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
David L. Noll of Rutgers has written Regulating Arbitration, California Law Review, Forthcoming. Here's the abstract: Arbitration is everywhere, as are calls to regulate its use in consumer and employment contracts. But when should Congress and federal administrative agencies do so? That is, what is the policy rationale for regulating arbitration through federal legislation and agency […]
Here. Op-ed by Faith Boninger, Research Associate in Education Policy, University of Colorado, and Alex Molnar, Research Professor, University of Colorado. Excerpt: In the U.S. and around the world, millions of digital data points are collected daily from children by private companies that provide educational technologies to teachers and schools. Once data are collected, there is little […]
by Jeff Sovern Here (behind paywall). Excerpt: In 2013, a loan officer at BancorpSouth Bank's Madison, Ala., branch received visits from two people with similar profiles within 10 days of each other, both saying they were first-time home buyers — one white, the other black. The employee allegedly steered the black customer to a smaller […]
Here. Excerpt: Thousands of angry consumers and business representatives have flooded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with comments on its May proposal to block companies from forcing customers to take disputes to arbitration instead of joining group lawsuits. Sentiment in the unusually high number of comment letters, more than 8,380 have already been filed though […]
by Jeff Sovern Here, titled The Risks of Unfettered Capitalism. The first and last paragraphs read: Capitalism may be the best economic system ever devised, but one of its drawbacks is that it provides financial incentives to harm and even kill people. Just ask those people who say they have been victimized bycigarettes, predatory lenders, Volkswagen diesel […]
by Jeff Sovern As reported by the Times last week, patients who are held at a hospital for "observation," even if that observation lasts days, but not formally admitted, and later released to a nursing home, won't have their stay in the nursing home covered by Medicare. That stay can cost tens of thousands of dollars. So Congress passed a […]
by Jeff Sovern Recently I saw an off-Broadway play by Norman Shabel, A Class Act. Shabel is a longtime practicing lawyer and the play is about negotiations to settle a toxic waste class action case (not a consumer case). Nevertheless, the lawyers note that the case can proceed as a class action because the victims–people […]
He writes that "Both books examine the intersection of competition, privacy and consumer protection law." One is Big Data and Competition Policy, written with Allen Grunes. Here's a description from Amazon's web site: Big Data and Big Analytics are a big deal today. Big Data is playing a pivotal role in many companies' strategic decision-making. […]