Roseanna Sommers of Michigan has written an important new paper, What do consumers understand about predispute arbitration agreements? An empirical investigation. Here’s the abstract: The results of a survey of 1,071 adults in the United States reveal that most consumers do not pay attention to, let alone understand, arbitration clauses in their everyday lives. The vast […]
Category Archives: Arbitration
Farshad Ghodoosi of California State, Northridge, David Nazarian College of Business & Economics, Department of Business Law and Monica M. Sharif of California State, Los Angeles have written Arbitration Effect, 60 Am. Bus. L.J. 235 (2023) (behind paywall but also available on Westlaw). Here’s the abstract: Arbitration is changing the United States justice system. Critics argue […]
On June 2, I wrote a blog post, Opaque (formerly Dark) Patterns and Arbitration Opt Outs, arguing that arbitration opt outs are really opaque patterns. On June 8, Mark J. Levin of the Ballard Spahr firm replied in a post at the Consumer Financial Monitor Blog, Arbitration opt out provisions benefit consumers, Professor Sovern. But Mr. […]
Dark Patterns (I prefer calling them Opaque Patterns) have been drawing a lot of attention from consumer protection regulators in recent years. For those who are unclear on what they are, the FTC has defined them as “practices that trick or manipulate users into making choices they would not otherwise have made and that may […]
The latest episode of Ballard Spahr’s Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast explores mass arbitration and includes as a guest arbitration champion Andrew Pincus, who argued the industry’s–and winning–position in Concepcion. As I listened to the podcast, which I recommend to those interested in consumer law, it became clear that one of Mr. Pincus’s chief complaints about […]
David Horton of California, Davis has written Forced Robot Arbitration, forthcoming in 109 Cornell Law Review (2023). Here’s the abstract: Recently, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have sparked interest in a topic that sounds like science fiction: robot judges. Researchers have harnessed AI to build programs that can predict the outcome of legal disputes. Some […]
I’m finally getting around to listening to the House Financial Services Committee’s hearing March 9, 2023 on the CFPB. One of the witnesses at the hearing was Devin Watkins, an attorney at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute. Mr. Watkins’ testimony includes the following: The Seventh Amendment of the U.S. Constitution mandates that “In Suits at […]
After years of advocating that forced arbitration provisions that deprive consumers of the option of filing claims in court and bar consumers from pursuing class actions, the Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform is now complaining that consumers are using arbitration too much. Reuters’ article on ILR’s shameless report, with a link to the […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in recent actions against entities it calls “repeat offenders” has zeroed in on flagrant violations of the Military Lending Act (MLA), which is meant to safeguard active-duty military members and their families from financial abuses. The MLA has features perfect for military families in search of a loan: it caps […]
Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed a rule to establish a public registry of supervised nonbanks’ terms and conditions in “take it or leave it” form contracts that claim to waive or limit consumer rights and protections, like bankruptcy rights, liability amounts, or complaint rights. In some cases, terms and conditions in non-negotiable form […]