by Jeff Sovern Here. Excerpt: [C]ompanies can use class action waivers to block consumer protection laws unless consumer protection laws find a way to block class action waivers. * * * Last month, the bureau made public a proposal to block class action waivers in arbitration clauses. A leading advocate for arbitration in the financial […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
Allison posted yesterday about the anti-CFPB ad. The American Banker's Rachel Witkowski and Rob Blackwell have more here. Among their reasons for saying it could backfire: "the ad is over the top;" "Consumer credit isn't tighter since the CFPB's creation;" and "The ad's sponsor has connections to a company under investigation by the CFPB."
Hosea H. Harvey of Temple has written Opening Schumer’s Box: The Empirical Foundations of Modern Consumer Finance Disclosure Law, 48 University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform (2014). Here's the abstract: This Article explores the fundamental failure of Congress’ twenty-five-year quest to utilize disclosure as the primary tool to both regulate credit card issuers and […]
Here. Here's the beginning of the story: If you're a TiVo user, your digital video recorder may be ratting you out to advertisers. In the latest example of consumer privacy being threatened by Big Data, TiVo's number-crunching subsidiary this week announced a partnership with media heavyweight Viacom that helps advertisers target TV viewers with specific […]
Here. Excerpt: Since lawmakers passed a landmark overhaul of American financial regulation in 2010, congressional Democrats and the Obama administration have successfully fought changes to the law, known as Dodd-Frank. Among the proposed changes, Republicans have sought to restructure the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or ease the regulatory burden on mid-sized banks, which have struggled […]
My colleague, Marc DeGirolami, read through the Spokeo oral argument transcript and had the following observations. I thought they might be of interest to readers of the blog. * Justice Kagan emphasized to counsel for Spokeo that the reporting/dissemination of false information in credit reports is itself plausibly described as a harm. So that […]
Here. An excerpt: The arguments in Spokeo Inc. v. Robins et al. took the usual pattern of the four liberal justices arguing for a broad interpretation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and standing to bring claims under Article III and the conservative justices appearing to seek to limit companies’ exposure to court proceedings. In the […]
by Jeff Sovern Deepak posted earlier about the extraordinary Times story on arbitration. I have been studying arbitration for some time, and yet some items in the story were new to me. Though the entire article demands to be read, here are two especially revealing quotes: Since no government agency tracks class actions, The Times […]