Author Archives: Jeff Sovern

NY AG Reaches Agreement with Credit Bureaus

by Jeff Sovern New York's Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, announced a settlement with the big three credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax, and Transunion, which is intended to improve credit report accuracy.  According to Scheiderman's release: The agreement requires that the CRAs employ specially trained employees to review all supporting documentation submitted by consumers for all disputes […]

Are Proposals for More Cost-Benefit Analysis a Stealth Attack on Dodd-Frank?

by Jeff Sovern The American Banker had an article this week, Could the Fight Over Cost-Benefit Analysis Kill Reg Relief? that made some interesting points.  After noting that Senate Banking Committee Chair Richard Shelby advocates more cost-benefit analysis, the author, Victoria Finkle, wrote: "The idea of rigorous cost-benefit analysis is like motherhood and apple pie […]

Vairo on Class Actions

Georgene M. Vairo of Loyola Los Angeles haw written Is the Class Action Really Dead? Is that Good or Bad for Class Members? 64 Emory Law Journal 477 (2014). Here's the abstract: Recent Supreme Court decisions have tightened up the standards for obtaining class certification and virtually eliminate class arbitration as well. However, while the […]

A Proposal to Ban the Sale of Junk Debt

By guest blogger Peter A. Holland  I have covered the NCLC's excellent proposal to ban the sale of time-barred debt here. The NCLC recommendations point to the larger problem that some banks sell off their worst, most unreliable, least collectible, most dubious accounts for literally pennies on the dollar (sometimes less), pursuant to broad disclaimers of […]

Effective Disclosure of Arbitration Clauses and the CFPB’s Power to Regulate Them

by Jeff Sovern Brian posted earlier that the CFPB has announced a field hearing on arbitration for March 10.  Because the CFPB often schedules such hearings when it announces something, it is probably going to release the next installment in its arbitration report (maybe the final installment) in conjunction with the hearing.  As Brian also […]

Joint Enforcement Action: Maryland Attorney General and CFPB Act On Illegal Mortgage Kickbacks

By guest blogger Peter A. Holland In a time of limited resources, perhaps a new model is emerging of joint CFPB/State Attorney General enforcement actions.  The recent joint action by the Bureau and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh provides a nice case study. Recently, Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau […]

Study of Public Participation in Rulemaking and Plain Language

Cynthia R. Farina, Mary Newhart, and Cheryl L. Blake, all of Cornell, have written The Problem with Words: Plain Language and Public Participation in Rulemaking, George Washington Law Review (2015 Forthcoming). Here's the abstract: The connection between more understandable rulemaking materials and broader, better public participation seems obvious, Yet the series of Presidential and statutory […]

Does Pre-Submission Media Coverage Increase the Odds of a Good Article Placement?

by Jeff Sovern As law students, law professors, and lawyers know, most law reviews are edited by law students, which means that law students select the articles that appear in their journals.  The prime submission season is just underway, and so newly-minted law review editors—most in their second year of law school—are choosing among the […]

ABA Consumer Protection Conference Focuses on Big Data, Internet of Things and Ad Substantiation Standards

By Dee Pridgen The ABA Consumer Protection Conference held February 12 on the campus of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., focused on the work of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as well as the work of advertising self-regulatory bodies, especially in the areas of big data and the “Internet of Things.”  FTC Chair […]