The Federal Trade Commission announced today: A debt collector and his companies will be banned from the debt collection business under a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission and the Attorney General of the State of New York, which charged them with seeking money from consumers for debts they did not owe. The action was […]
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Yesterday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released a report on coordinated community-based efforts to prevent, detect, and respond to elder financial exploitation. According to the CFPB's press release, the "report also found that a strong collaboration among community stakeholders – like financial institutions, adult protective services, and law enforcement – can be very effective in […]
A few days ago I wrote here about a lawsuit and consent order that were filed in Baltimore, Maryland, determining that a series of criticisms posted against Georgia dentist Mitul Patel by Matthew Chan, one of his patients in Georgia, were false and defamatory, and commanding their removal from the web and from search engine […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Student Loan Ombudsman released a report last week on consumers complaints of servicing problems that make it difficult to get lower student loan payments tied to their income. Student loan borrowers seeking to take advantage of income-driven repayment plans with their federal student loans complain to the CFPB about prolonged […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau yesterday took action against Wells Fargo Bank for illegal private student loan servicing practices that increased costs and unfairly penalized certain student loan borrowers. The CFPB identified breakdowns throughout Wells Fargo’s servicing process including failing to provide important payment information to consumers, charging consumers illegal fees, and failing to update […]
by Paul Alan Levy At a time when the California Supreme Court is deciding whether to grant discretionary review of the decision of the California Court of Appeal in Hassell v. Bird, which held that Yelp could be required to comply with a default judgment holding that a posted review of a California lawyer was […]
That's pretty much the topic of The Limits of Comprehensive Peace: The Example of the FLSA by Lonnie Hoffman and Christian Ward. Here is the abstract: Normally, cases can be settled on broad terms that release all related claims. Although there are added protections that must be satisfied when a settlement is proposed in the class action […]
Read this article by Russ Mitchell and Tracey Lien. Here's an excerpt: The robot cars aren’t coming. The robot cars are here. A fleet of Fords and Volvos, capable of driving themselves, is fully equipped and ready to hit the streets of Pittsburgh within weeks. The cars will be deployed by Uber, the ride-hailing company. Experimental robot cars already […]
Banks want to keep their customers out of court. But consumers overwhelmingly want the right to take banks to court if they have a dispute. Those are the findings of research released today by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Pew studied two subjects: (1) the use of arbitration clauses, class-action bans, and jury trial waivers by […]
The Supreme Court's decisions in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007), and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009), heightened the standard for fact pleading in federal court. These cases were generally understood to mean that plaintiffs would have to plead facts more specifically than they had been to avoid dismissal of their federal-court […]

