by Jeff Sovern The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce has forwarded to the full committee a bipartisan bill (draft here, though perhaps not the version the subcommittee approved; section-by-section commentary here). The last I heard, Senator Cantwell, the Senate Commerce Committee chair, had not signed on, putting the bill's future […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
Bernard Chao of Denver has written Unjust Enrichment: Standing Up for Privacy Rights. Here is the abstract: In TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, one of the country’s largest credit reporting agencies violated the Federal Credit Report Act (“FCRA”) by failing to “follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy . . ..” As a result, thousands of […]
Vijay Raghavan of Brooklyn has written Shifting Burdens at the Fringe, 102 Boston University Law Review (2022). Here’s the abstract: Scholars are increasingly arguing that consumer law can be a site of distribution. This raises at least two concerns: the classic argument associated with Louis Kaplow & Steven Shavell against redistributing income through legal rules, […]
by Jeff Sovern When Congress enacted the Credit CARD Act of 2009, it provided that credit card penalty fees, like late fees, “shall be reasonable and proportional” and gave the Fed the power–later transferred to the CFPB–to set safe harbor amounts which would presumptively be reasonable and proportional. But it didn’t limit fees for credit […]
by Jeff Sovern As the American Banker's Kate Berry reported (behind a paywall but available on Lexis), the CFPB's Spring Regulatory Agenda has been posted to the OMB's web site, rather than, as has been the Bureau's practice, the CFPB web site. Here it is: Prerule stage – Consumer Access to Financial Records, 3170-AA78 Proposed […]
The submission deadline is August 22 and the conference is December 15-16. More here.
by Jeff Sovern When last we left our intrepid adventurer’s story, she had arrived home, even if her bag had not. But one week after her original flight to Atlanta, she received a text from Delta indicating that her bag was about to be delivered—to the hotel she had left four days before. While she […]
Leigh Osofsky and Kathleen DeLaney Thomas, both of North Carolina, have written Implicit Legislative Bias: The Case of the Mortgage Interest Deduction, 56 UC Davis Law Review (2022). Here is the abstract: The home mortgage interest deduction is over 100 years old. The deduction has been subject to increasing and, at times, withering criticism from […]
by Jeff Sovern When last we left my daughter, she was in Atlanta, bagless, and Delta was clueless about where it was. On Sunday, she returned to the Atlanta airport for her return flight. Fortunately, checking in went faster than for her departure flight because she didn’t have a bag to check! She cleared security, […]
by Jeff Sovern Thursday night, my daughter waved goodbye to her suitcase at LaGuardia as she flew to Atlanta for a wedding. She arrived in Atlanta at 10:30 pm, but her bag was a no show. She optimistically, but as it happened, pointlessly, stayed at the airport until 1:00 am at the advice of Delta […]

