by Jeff Sovern According to Private Enforcement in Administrative Courts, 72 Vanderbilt Law Review, (Forthcoming), by Michael Sant'Ambrogio of Michigan State, in the year ending March 31, 2017, the government filed only eight consumer protection cases in federal court, which contrasts with the 9,706 cases filed by private plaintiffs. Sometimes we see the argument that we don't need private enforcement […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
by Jeff Sovern My colleague, Vincent DiLorenzo, has written Fintech Lending: A Study of Expectations Versus Market Outcomes, Forthcoming in Review of Banking & Financial Law. Here is the abstract: This paper documents the expectations for the fintech lending industry, which has emerged in this decade, and compares such expectations to market outcomes. It presents an […]
Samuel Issacharoff and Florencia Marotta-Wurgler, both of NYU, have written The Hollowed Out Common Law. Here's the abstract: The electronic marketplace poses novel issues for contract law. Contracts created through browsewrap, clickwrap, and shrinkwrap (contracts whose embedded terms are only available after purchase) poorly fit doctrines that emerged from face-to-face offer and acceptance, the mutual execution […]
by Jeff Sovern A number of sources have reported on a survey of more than one thousand metastatic breast cancer patients presented recently at an American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) symposium that found that debt collectors had contacted about half about cancer care bills. HCP said that 49% had heard from debt collectors while AccountRecovery.net put […]
Here, by Brad Wolverton & Alex Richards. I don't want to quote too much, so here is an incomplete excerpt: The federal watchdog agency created to protect consumers is not regulating two of the country’s fastest-growing financial institutions despite receiving voluminous complaints about them, NerdWallet has found. Escaping scrutiny are Green Dot Corp. — which […]
Here. Excerpt from Jeff Bater's report: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau took only three enforcement actions in the third quarter of 2018 and is on pace for the lowest yearly total in its seven years of existence. The bureau levied $1.6 million in penalties in the three-month period ending in September, compared to $7.3 million […]
by Jeff Sovern Acting CFPB director Mick Mulvaney famously wrote that he would not push the envelope. He explained: That entire governing philosophy of pushing the envelope frightens me a little. We are government employees, and we work for the people. That means everyone: those who use credit cards and those who provide the credit; […]
Todd J. Zywicki of George Mason has written The Behavioral Economics of Behavioral Law & Economics, Journal of Behavioral Economics (2019, Forthcoming). Here is the abstract: Behavioral Law & Economics (BLE) has loudly proclaimed its victory over traditional law & economics methodologies. Nowhere has this proclamation been so loud or self-certain as with respect to claims […]
by Jeff Sovern Years ago, I heard the puppet Lambchop (Shari Lewis) sing The Song That Never Ends: This is the song that never endsYes, it just goes on and on my friends.Some people started singing it, not knowing what it was.And they continue singing it forever just because,This is the song that doesn’t end. […]
by Jeff Sovern Regular readers of this blog know that I collect instances of people agreeing to contracts without reading them. Among my examples: Chief Justice Roberts, Judge Posner, Hillary Clinton, and consumer law professors. Now I think we can add FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips to the list, though his remarks are ambiguous enough that […]