by Jeff Sovern Elayne Greenberg, Paul Kirgis, Yuxiang Liu, and I have posted a draft of our article, "Whimsy Little Contracts" with Unexpected Consequences: An Empirical Analysis of Consumer Understanding of Arbitration Agreements, to the web. Here's the abstract: Arbitration clauses have become ubiquitous in consumer contracts. These arbitration clauses require consumers to waive the […]
Category Archives: Arbitration
You can watch the trailer here.
The Times has the story under the headline Tougher Shield for Soldiers Against Predatory Lenders. The proposed regulation closes loopholes like these described in the Times story: The law set a 36 percent interest rate cap on a range of high-cost loan products. But the protections applied to a narrow sliver of loans, covering only […]
by Jeff Sovern The CFPB Monitor blog has a post titled Industry trade groups urge OMB not to approve CFPB arbitration telephone survey about a filing by the American Bankers Association, the Consumer Bankers Association and the Financial Services Roundtable. They "strongly recommend that OMB not approve the proposal because it will not produce information of practical utility […]
Christopher R. Drahozal of Kansas has written AAA Consumer Arbitration, forthcoming in Beyond Elite Law: Access to Civil Justice for Americans of Average Means (Samuel Estreicher & Joy Radice eds. Cambridge University Press). Here's the abstract: This chapter has provided an overview of consumer arbitrations administered by the American Arbitration Association, the largest administrator of […]
Christopher R. Drahozal of Kansas has written FAA Preemption after Concepcion, 35 Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law 153 (2014, Forthcoming). Here is the abstract: AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion is an important case for its holding that the FAA preempts application of state unconscionability doctrine to invalidate an arbitration clause with a class […]
Co-blogger Paul Bland, the new Executive Director of Public Justice, was recently interviewed by Media Matters. In an engaging interview in his office Paul discusses his singular career as a champion for consumer rights, the importance of class actions as a means of challenging corporate wrondoing, and the pro-corporate bent of the Roberts Court. It's a […]
by Stephen Gardner The Board of Directors of the National Association of Consumer Advocates adopted the Third Edition of its Standards and Guidelines for Litigating and Settling Class Actions on May 13 (Download here), continuing a tradition of setting high standards for the ways consumer class actions are handled that began with the first Guidelines adopted in […]
Yesterday's and today's Times have a pair of articles on General Mills's new arbitration policy (HT: Eric Levine). According to the articles, yesterday's When ‘Liking’ a Brand Online Voids the Right to Sue and today's General Mills Amends New Legal Policies, if you sign up for General Mills email alerts, download a coupon from General […]