by Jeff Sovern Housing Wire reports in Congressional Republicans mull bill to add CFPB oversight, that the House will vote this week on a bill to replace the CFPB's director with a commission and subject it to the congressional appropriation process. The bill is not expected to receive a warm welcome in the Senate or at […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
In August we posted a link to a paper Albany's Elizabeth Renuart had written, Uneasy Intersections: The Right to Foreclose and the U.C.C., 48 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1205 (2013), The paper has already drawn more than 500 downloads. An updated version is now available. Here is the revised abstract: Historically, the practice of […]
Here. Tim Danahey interviews Theresa Amato of Fair Contracts.org and Citizen Works. Theresa discusses how consumer contracts reduce consumers to "contract serfdom" and also explores issues governing arbitration clauses. Worth a listen, and if you are teaching consumer law this semester, this merits passing on to students as a painless way to learn about consumer protection […]
by Jeff Sovern There's been a lot of discussion recently about whether the Post Office should offer banking services. The idea is that it could serve the unbanked, and that its many existing branches would cover the entire country (Disclosure: one of my brothers works for the Postal Service, though we haven't discussed this idea). For […]
Mark Elliott Budnitz of Georgia State has written Buyer Beware: Georgia Consumers Can't Rely on the Fair Business Practices Act, 6 John Marshall Law Journal 507 (2013). Here is the abstract: In Novare Group, Inc. v. Sarif, the Georgia Supreme Court rejected the plaintiffs' claim that the defendant brokers and developers violated the Georgia Fair […]
Coverage by the New York Law Journal here and by Inside ARM.com here.
Colleen E. Haight of San Jose State University and Derek Thieme of George Mason University's Mercatus Center have written Regulating Automobiles: The Consequences for Consumers. Here is the abstract: Automobiles are ubiquitous. Most Americans take at least one car trip every day to get to work or school or to run household errands. The automobile […]
by Jeff Sovern This Times op-ed reports that former patients have sued providers of such therapy under state UDAP laws. As I tell my students, consumer law is everywhere!
The American Banker recently published a story, Courthouse 'Rocket Dockets' Give Debt Collectors Edge Over Debtors, about how consumers feel pressured to settle debt cases after receiving summonses to courthouse settlement conferences with debt collectors. An excerpt: At first glance these sessions resemble legally mandated mediation: they take place in courtrooms and are administered by […]
by Jeff Sovern The Wall Street Journal has the story here. The bill would allow other federal agencies to veto Bureau rules more easily. It is hard to imagine the bill passing the Senate or being signed into law by the president. Meanwhile, the article points out, the clock is ticking on the debt ceiling.