The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, though only in its infancy, is already supplying lawyers to law firms that represent the financial services industry, as described in this article by Jenna Greene. Greene says that the law firm Buckley Sandler, whose home page describes itself as "Legal Counsel to the Financial Services Industry," "nabbed Benjamin […]
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In Oxford Health Plans v. Sutter, the Supreme Court today upheld an arbitrator's decision that a particular arbitration clause authorized class arbitration. Justice Kagan wrote the main opinion, which was unanimous. The standard of review of arbitrators' decisions under the Federal Arbitration Act is highly deferential. So "the sole question for us," Justice Kagan explained, […]
In a rare win for a plaintiff in a Supreme Court case involving class actions and arbitration, the Court ruled today in Oxford Health Plans LLC v. Sutter that an arbitrator's decision to allow class rather than individual arbitration had to be accepted by the courts. What was decisive in the case was that the plaintiff […]
Although I am not able to find the announcement or the rule on the Bureau's website, Mondaq is reporting that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued a rule to implement Dodd-Frank's ban on mandatory arbitration clauses in mortgage contracts. The rule is available here. The rule implements changes required by Section 1414 of the […]
Read Senator Whitehouse's essay. Here's the intro: In recent years corporations have racked up significant victories before the U.S. Supreme Court — a corporate windfall that has come at the expense of Americans who are unable to win redress for their injuries. These decisions have also worked an often overlooked harm: They have made it […]
by Brian Wolfman As many of our readers know, the Dodd-Frank financial reform law authorizes the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to regulate consumer arbitration. Under that law, the CFPB must conduct a study of consumer arbitration and then issue a report to Congress before it does anything to regulate pre-dispute aribtration clauses in consumer finance […]
Here. And an FTC infographic below:
As you will recall, in late April, the Supreme Court decided McBurney v. Young, holding unanimously that neither the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV nor the dormant Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution prevents a state from limiting the right of access to the state's public records to its own citizens. (For […]
We have posted frequently about the ramifications of the states' decisions to opt-in (or not) to the Affordable Care Act's massive medicaid expansion, including just a few days ago, when we noted the large number of states that have either decided not to opt in (19) or are still thinking about it (8). A new […]
A stunning revelation this week about consumer privacy: the federal government has obtained a secret order from a secret court to obtain "telephony metadata" — i.e. who's called whom when and for how long — for all Verizon calls made to or within the United States. The Washington Post story quotes an anonymous expert as […]