Dee Pridgen of Wyoming has written Sea Changes in Consumer Financial Protection: Stronger Agency and Stronger Laws. I read this one before it was posted and found it particularly useful in pulling together some recent themes in consumer law and explaining how the Dodd-Frank Act's anti-predatory lending rules are based on behavioral economics, as opposed to […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
Robert C. Hockett of Cornell has written Paying Paul and Robbing No One: An Eminent Domain Solution for Underwater Mortgage Debt that Can Benefit Literally Everyone. Here's the abstract: This essay provides updated argumentation for and abbreviated specification of the municipal eminent domain plan for underwater mortgage loans that the author lays out in his […]
by Jeff Sovern I've been pulling together some materials for a section in the next edition of our casebook on debt collection litigation. Here is some of what I've found: 1. From FTC, Reparing a Broken System: Protecting Consumers in Debt Collection Litigation and Arbitration i (2010): “The system for resolving disputes about consumer debts […]
Mark Elliott Budnitz of Georgia State has written Mobile Financial Services: The Need for a Comprehensive Consumer Protection Law, 27 Banking & Finance Law Review (2012). Here's the abstract: The article first describes mobile financial services for consumers and the types of companies participating in the provision of those services. Anticipated consumer problems are explored, […]
by Jeff Sovern Here. The piece is by GW's Jeffrey Rosen and explores how online marketers gather and use information about consumers. Rosen describes how he visited different web sites using two different browsers, as a result of which one online marketer, BlueKai, created two inconsistent personae for him. BlueKai, incidentally, allows consumers to see […]
Daniel J. Solove of GW has written Privacy Self-Management and the Consent Paradox, 126 Harvard Law Review (2013). Here's the abstract: The current regulatory approach for protecting privacy involves what I refer to as the “privacy self-management model” – the law provides people with a set of rights to enable them to decide for themselves […]
Here. Nice to see consumer law getting attention in petitions.
A UCC omnibus bill being introduced in the New York Legislature would revise UCC Articles 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, and 9, to embody the latest UCC Model Versions. If you have views about particular advantages and disadvantages to adoption, or suggested revisions, Norman Silber would be interested in knowing about them. Please email him at Norman.Silber@Hofstra.edu
by Jeff Sovern A new Fannie Mae survey reports that nearly half of lower-income respondents and more than a third of higher-income respondents obtain quotes from only one mortgage lender. The survey also confirms findings in other reports that "a substantial portion of all consumers do not understand key mortgage elements." In particular, 41% of borrowers were […]
Here. Some highlights: Of the 92 financial institutions studied, 43 percent contain mandatory binding arbitration clauses. This number increases to 47 percent when considering only banks, because none of the credit unions studied include an arbitration clause in their account agreements. * * * The larger the financial institution, the more likely an account agreement will […]