by Jeff Sovern Peter Holland has an interesting blog post pulling together a lot of the most significant findings of our arbitration study and adding his own commentary. Meanwhile, Ballard Spahr lawyers Alan Kaplinsky, Mark Levin, and Daniel McKenna responded to my earlier American Banker op-ed in an op-ed of their own, claiming Consumers Fare Better […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
by Jeff Sovern In our casebook, we quote a 1982 article that reports on a credit scoring system that took into account, in calculating the score, the first letter of the applicant's last name. Credit scoring has evolved since then but maybe history is repeating itself or at least rhyming. Today's Times includes an article, […]
Here. The subtitle reads: Consumer-Debt Adviser Howard Dvorkin Has Financial Links to Firms Such as Payday Lenders That Often Drive People Deeper into Debt. And here's the beginning of the article: One of the most prominent advocates for consumer debt relief has ties to firms that can leave people deeper in debt. Howard S. Dvorkin is […]
by Jeff Sovern We've mentioned Jake Halpern's terrific book Bad Paper about the debt collection industry before (see here and here). I finally got around to listening to the audio version. If you teach debt collection law, it's a must-read to help you learn about the industry. If you practice in the area, you may already […]
Alexandra Power Everhart Sickler of North Dakota has written The Truth Shall Set You Free: Explaining Judicial Hostility to the Truth in Lending Act’s Right to Rescind a Mortgage Loan, forthcoming in the Rutgers Journal of Law and Urban Policy. Here is the abstract: The Supreme Court is entertaining a divide among the federal circuits […]
(HT: Rosemary Shahan). Might be worth assigning to students learning about fraud and UDAP statutes.
by Jeff Sovern A professor who is new to teaching consumer law has asked about skills exercises (also called active learning exercises) professors could require of students. I suggested having a student write a demand letter that didn’t violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (or that did), writing a privacy policy, or perhaps one of the many […]
Mary L. Heen of Richmond has written Nondiscrimination in Insurance: The Next Chapter, 49 Georgia Law Review (2014-2015). Here is the abstract: For nearly 150 years, American insurance companies have engaged in race and gender pricing practices that would be illegal if followed today by any other major commercial enterprise. The insurance industry has defended its […]
Wenli Li of the Philadelphia Fed, Ishani Tewari of the Yale School of Management, and Michelle J. White of California, San Diego's Department of Economics and the National Bureau of Economic Research have written Using Bankruptcy to Reduce Foreclosures: Does Strip-Down of Mortgages Affect the Supply of Mortgage Credit? Here's the abstract: We assess the […]