The state senate is considering a bill that would eliminate requirements that debt buyers have detailed information about the debt they buy before suing to enforce the debt in court. The bill passed out of committee over the objections of consumer advocates that the bill would facilitate abusive lawsuits against consumers. The Raleigh News & […]
Author Archives: Scott Michelman
You may recall an excellent and eye-opening series from the Washington Post in the fall of 2013 showing how a combination of relatively small tax underpayments could add up, with fees and penalties, to losing your home in the nation's capital. (Here's Brian's blog about it, with links.) A class action was filed in September 2013 […]
We told you yesterday (see here and here) about a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act, now pending in Congress, that would delay protections for service members against predatory lending. Happily, today the House Armed Services Committee removed the provision, by just a two-vote margin. The Military Times has the story. Here is Public Citizen's […]
You may recall that last September, California enacted the nation's first ban on non-disparagement clauses in consumer contracts — that is, clauses prohibiting consumers from criticizing (however truthfully) companies they do business with. Today, Representatives Darrell Issa, Eric Swalwell, Blake Farenthold, and Brad Sherman (two Democrats and two Republicans) jointly proposed in Congress the Consumer Review […]
In this year's proposed National Defense Authorization Act, currently before the House Armed Services Committee, there's a provision to delay for one year DoD regulations to protect service members from predatory lenders. What's the year for? Further study. Rep. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, herself a veteran, is expected to try to remove the delay provision. […]
As the people of Baltimore recover from this week's rioting and try to make sense of the shocking event that sparked it, 538.com reflects on some relevant statistics about economic conditions in Baltimore: -The median income for African-American households: $33,000 (white households make nearly double that amount). -The unemploment rate for African-American men 20 to […]
We discussed previously a "debt strike" launched by students of the for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges, which faces multiple legal actions from state and federal regulators over claims that it misled students about job prospects and graduation rates (see our prior discussion about one such action here). Now the company is closing its schools, reports the […]
Today the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, a Fair Credit Reporting Act claim about an incorrect report. Spokeo, a company that publishes information about people online, challenged the plaintiff's standing to proceed in the absence of concrete harm flowing from the inaccurate report of facts about the plaintiff. The plaintiff, Robins, […]
We've discussed before some of the troubling aspects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Here's another one: the fact it's being negotiated in secret. As a Times op-ed argues, [T]he secrecy of trade negotiations does not just hide information from the public. It creates a funnel where powerful interests congregate, absent the checks, balances and necessary hurdles […]
In a ruling that seems too obvious to have been the subject of debate (though it was), the Sixth Circuit held this week that Title VII's protection against being subject to discrimination "because [the employee] opposed . . . an unlawful employment practice,” 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a), covers a worker who resists sexual harassment by […]