The Federal Trade Commission yesterday issued a report on the “fundamental lack of transparency” in the data broker industry. The FTC’s press release provides a good summary: The report, “Data Brokers: A Call for Transparency and Accountability” is the result of a study of nine data brokers, representing a cross-section of the industry, undertaken by […]
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Health insurers that were originally wary of participating in the Affordable Care Act's "exchanges" now are changing their tune, seeing the Act as an opportunity for new business, as explained in this article by Reed Abelson.
Scott noted earlier today that the California Supreme Court will hear a case posing the following question: Is a payday lender that is formally owned by a Native American tribe but run by a third-party who keeps most of the proceeds protected by tribal sovereign immunity? So, the U.S. Supreme Court just this morning issued […]
Last week the California Supreme Court granted review in People v. Miami Nation Enterprises, which presents the issue of when a payday lending operation that is formally owned by a Native American tribe but run by a third-party who keeps most of the proceeds is protected by tribal sovereign immunity. The practice of payday lenders […]
by Paul Alan Levy In an opinion issued this morning, the D.C. Circuit unanimously reversed a trial court ruling that compelled several ISP's to provide identifying information for more than a thousand anonymous users who were sued a maker of pornographic movies for allegedly using the BitTorrent protocol to provide access to copies of an […]
Check out this report on the relationship between corporate executive pay and worker pay, and then read this article on the topic by David Lazarus, who points out that the salary of the CEO of CVS Caremark last year was 422 times the median wage of a CVS employee.
Remember the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 (better known as the CARD Act)? The CARD Act made it more difficult for credit card companies to retroactively increase rates on existing balances or to impose large late fees, and it drastically curbed overlimit fees. The Act also sought to force credit card […]
We have discussed the increasing use by companies of non-disparagement clauses in take-it-or-leave-it consumer contracts, where the consumer "agrees" not to say anything critical of a company from which it buys something Go, for instance, here, discussing the use of these clauses in mortgage loan-modification contracts. And we have discussed repeatedly (go, for instance, here […]
Mortgage servicers increasingly are including non-disparagement clauses in loan modification agreements, including ordinary loan modifications (i.e., those that are not negotiated in settlement of litigation). In at least one instance, Ocwen, the largest non-bank servicer of mortgages in the U.S. thanks to a number of acquisitions in recent years, sought to impose a non-disparagement provision […]
…is the catchy title of an NPR reporting series airing this week about the rise of new "debtors' prisons" as a result of state and local court practices across the country. According to the written summary of the story, everyday, people go to jail because they failed to pay their court debts. In Benton County, […]