by Jeff Sovern BloombergBusiness columnist Carter Dougherty has a story, Bank Customers May Get Their Day in Court, about the CFPB arbitration report. Dougherty writes: In its report, the CFPB noted that there were just 52 arbitration claims under $1,000 in 2010 and 2011, and consumers won relief in just four of them. Says [Deepak] […]
Category Archives: Arbitration
Prolific class action scholar (and former Scalia clerk) Brian Fitzpatrick of Vanderbilt Law has just posted to SSRN an interesting new paper foreseeing and lamenting the effects of his former boss's handiwork in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion and American Express v. Italian Colors (both cases in which I had the privilege of representing the losing […]
Here. An excerpt: In the Big Business narrative, arbitration is a far better place for consumers than a nasty-wasty court. Lack of choice is a better choice! Well, this week, a big, fat government report blew that fiction away. * * * Companies, it turns out, weren't using mandatory arbitration clauses to protect us. […]
The following consumer advocates will be live-tweeting today's CFPB field hearing on arbitration, which gets underway at 11am. Ellen Taverna, NACA – @NACAdvocate Christine Hines, Public Citizen – @chrhines Michelle Schwartz, Alliance for Justice – @SchwartzAFJ NCLC – @NCLC4consumers AFR – @realbankreform You should also be able to watch a web livestream of the hearing here.
Here's the text of CFPB Director Richard Cordray's remarks on the arbitration report, to be delivered at today's field hearing in Newark. He summarizes the legal backdrop to the Bureau's report, its empirical approach, and its key findings (which I've highlighted in bold). Well worth reading in full. Prepared Remarks of Richard Cordray Director […]
by Jeff Sovern Brian posted earlier that the CFPB has announced a field hearing on arbitration for March 10. Because the CFPB often schedules such hearings when it announces something, it is probably going to release the next installment in its arbitration report (maybe the final installment) in conjunction with the hearing. As Brian also […]
by Jeff Sovern Some arbitration clauses provide that consumers can opt out of arbitration if the consumer writes to the company within a certain period of time of entering into the agreement, typically 30-60 days after opening the account. In our arbitration study, we observed that we didn't know how many consumers had taken advantage […]
by Peter Holland In anticipation of the CFPB’s forthcoming study on forced arbitration in consumer contracts, we can expect lots of rhetoric from industry about how arbitration is more consumer friendly than litigation, and that it results in better outcomes (i.e. more money) for consumers. (If this were really so, then how could a company […]