We received the following Call for Papers: On April 6, 2022, in addition to announcing an extension of the federal student loan payment pause, the White House announced that the U.S. Department of Education is taking steps to give a fresh start to millions of struggling borrowers who are currently in default on their federal […]
Category Archives: Debt Collection
So reports George Simons at Bloomberg Law. Excerpt: California, Arizona, and Minnesota are good examples of states attempting to increase access to justice while charging defendants enormous filing fees. These fees are charged for all types of civil lawsuits, but are particularly relevant to debt lawsuits where defendants are being sued because, presumably, they don’t […]
Here. Excerpt: Since the 70’s, the FCRA has allowed consumers with credit reporting claims to recover up to $1,000 per statutory violation of the law, while the FDCPA allows statutory damages up to $1000 per case even when multiple violations of the law are present. It is decades-past time for an update. An annual inflation […]
Daniel Wilf-Townsend of Chicago has written Assembly-Line Plaintiffs, Forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review. Here is the abstract: Around the country, state courts are being flooded with the claims of massive repeat filers. These large corporate plaintiffs leverage economies of scale to bring tremendous quantities of low-value claims against largely unrepresented individual defendants. Using recently developed […]
Erik Durbin and Charles J. Romeo, both of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, have written The Economics of Debt Collection, with Attention to the Issue of Salience of Collections at the Time Credit Is Granted, 16 Journal of Credit Risk (2020). Here is the abstract: This paper considers the role of policies that protect consumers from […]
On Saturday, we posted links to consumer advocates' reactions to the CFPB's new debt collection rules. Want to know how the industry sees the regulations, at least at first? Go here, to AccountsRecovery.net. Here's a hint: "there appeared to be no provisions or restrictions in the rule that should cause collection agencies to lose a […]
The new rules are here. NACA and other groups, calling the rules a "mixed bag for consumers," comment here. Consumer Reports ("CFPB rules fail to protect consumers from abusive debt collection harassment") comments here. The Bureau said it intends to issue more rules in December.
by Stephen Gardner Today, the Supreme Court held that collecting government debt by robocalling cellphones didn’t deserve special First Amendment treatment. In Barr v. American Assn. of Political Consultants, Inc., the Court held that a 2015 amendment to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which allowed cellphone robocalls to collect federal debts (such as student loans […]
Pamela Foohey of Indiana Maurer, Dalié Jiménez of Irvine, and Christopher K. Odinet of Iowa have written The Debt Collection Pandemic, California Law Review Online (2020 Forthcoming). Here is the abstract: As of May 2020, the United States' reaction to the unique and alarming threat of COVID-19 has partially succeeded in slowing the virus’s spread. […]
Pamela Foohey, Dalié Jiménez, & Christopher K. Odinet have written CARES Act Gimmicks, How Not to Give People Money During a Pandemic and What to Do Instead, online at the Illinois Law Review. Excerpt (footnotes omitted): As a short term solution, money equivalents should have begun with an immediate nationwide eviction and foreclosure moratorium, accompanied by a debt […]