Last week, Brian noted that DropBox has added a forced arbitration clause with a class-action ban to its terms of use, and observed that the "opt-out" provision was a "public relations gambit," not a serious effort to allow consumers to make an informed choice about whether to give up the right to go to court. […]
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by Paul Alan Levy After Dwayne Cooney left his car overnight for service at Jim Butler Chevrolet in Fenton, Missouri, and was told his car had required 5-1/2 hours work, he paid the bill in full. But he was curious about what had taken to long to fix, so he checked the dash camera which, […]
Those are topics of continuing concern to consumer advocates and the title of this paper by Sean Brian. Here is the abstract: In the last few years, store gift certificates have matured into a diverse set of products including "open loop" prepaid cards capable of providing services traditionally reserved to banks. At the same time, […]
The question before the Court in Lawson v. FMR LLC was whether the whistleblower protection of Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 applies only to employees of public corporations or also to the employees of contractors with those corporations. Contractors' employees are included, ruled the Supreme Court today, in a 6-3 decision that did not split along […]
Read this article by Kate Cox.
March 2-8 is National Consumer Protection Week (NCPW). NCPW is a campaign of a group of non-profit organizations (including AARP and Consumers Union) and federal and state government entities (including the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau), aimed at helping consumer to “take advantage of their consumer rights and make better-informed decisions.” […]
The National Center for Access to Justice has released the "Access to Justice Index," an online resource presenting data on the "performance of state-based justice systems in assuring access to justice." Going state by state, the index looks at four elements of state-based justice systems: • the number of civil legal aid attorneys serving the […]
Despite her history of backing measures on the leading edge of the conservative agenda (such as the controversial immigration law S.B. 1070, later invalidated in part by the Supreme Court), Arizona's Republican Governor Jan Brewer yesterday vetoed a bill that would have permitted discrimination against LGBT customers by business owners who cited religious reasons for […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced yesterday that it has sued ITT Educational Services, Inc., accusing the for-profit college chain of predatory student lending. We believe that ITT used high-pressure tactics to push many students into expensive private student loans that were likely to end in default. This is our first public enforcement action against […]
Those are the topics considered in law teacher Joseph Singer's new article Foreclosure and the Failures of Formality, or Subprime Mortgage Conundrums and How to Fix Them. Start with the abstract: The subprime mortgage crisis was not only an economic disaster but posed challenges to traditional rules of property law. Banks helped create the crisis […]