by Jeff Sovern From The Hill. Excerpt: A spending bill released Wednesday by the House Appropriations Committee includes major restraints for financial regulatory agencies. * * * Including the provisions in the spending bill, which is must-pass legislation, increases the odds they could become law. The measure places the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Consumer Financial […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
Here. From the Executive Summary: 32 firms appear to be offering consumer arbitration services in California. Of those, only 11 firms follow the substantive requirements of §1281.96(a) , and of those, only three firms can be said to evidence robust and full compliance with the statutory regime, including §1281.96(b)’s formal requirements as to format, timing […]
by Jeff Sovern Reuters reports that the bill has passed an Assembly committee, and is expected to pass the Assembly in August (the state Senate has already passed it). Here's the part I don't understand: if California enacts the law, how can it avoid being preempted under the Federal Arbitration Act, as SCOTUS has interpreted […]
by Jeff Sovern Here. Using reconciliation would make the bill filibuster-proof, but would require the Republicans to lose no more than two of their number, assuming no Democrats voted in favor of the bill.
by Jeff Sovern Here. The 22 words consists of the following statement, to appear on Facebook's help page: “We use tools to identify and store links shared in messages, including a count of the number of times links are shared.” As a general matter, I am skeptical of settlements that provide only a disclosure on […]
by Jeff Sovern As we reported a couple weeks ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Henson v. Santander that debt buyers are not automatically debt collectors under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. However, debt buyers which have debt collection as the principal purpose of their business should still qualify as debt collectors under the statute (the […]
Paige Marta Skiba and Jean Xiao of Vanderbilt have written Consumer Litigation Funding: Just Another Form of Payday Lending? 80 Law and Contemporary Problems (2017). Here is the abstract: This article provides a side-by-side comparison of payday lending and consumer litigation funding in order to aid policymakers. Funding has similarities with payday lending because they are […]
by Jeff Sovern Some congressional Republicans have said that the CFPB was asleep at the switch when it came to the Wells Fargo unauthorized account scandal, and that it just piggy-backed on the LA City Attorney, which was the first governmental office to bring a case against Wells for the accounts. But now the LA […]
The case is Reyes v. Lincoln Autmotive Financial Service, and it conflicts with decisions of the Third and Eleventh Circuits. The TCPA has come in for increasing attention lately, with a recent hearing in Congress discussing possible amendments to the statute. (HT: Gregory Gauthier)