FHFA, the bizarre federal agency running our nationalized mortgage funders Fannie and Freddie, announced a proposal last week that would surcharge mortgages in five states – New York, New Jersey, Florida, Illinois and Connecticut, with a 30 basis point (0.3%) fee. The ostensible reason? It claims Fannie and Freddie lose money in those states due […]
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On Monday, Allison posted about the 9th Circuit's grant of rehearing en banc in Kilgore v. Key Bank. The question is whether the Federal Arbitration Act preempts a California-law rule that says that claims for a so-called "public injunction" cannot be forced into arbitration (even if an arbitration agreement's terms puts those claims there). The […]
Today's Blog of the Legal Times has this interesting post about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's use of investigatory demands on potential enforcement targets in the financial services industry.
As explained in this LA Times story, "[m]ore than 3.5 million Discover credit card customers will share $200 million in refunds in the wake of a federal investigation [by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the FDIC] that determined the bank tricked people into signing up for payment protection plans and other add-on services." The […]
In July, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held in Kilgore v. Key Bank that, in light of AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, California law holding that claims for public injunctive relief are not subject to mandatory arbitration is preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act. The court held that the California rule does not survive Concepcion […]
In this Wall St. Journal op-ed, Congressman Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) says that the Consumer Financial Services Bureau is not transparent about how it plans to spend its money. He also says that the CFPB pays its employees too much money: A review of the bureau's salaries as of Aug. 28, 2012, reveals that approximately 60% […]
We explained here that after the Supreme Court threw out the nationwide employment discrimination class action against Wal-Mart on behalf of hundreds of thousands of women, the class lawyers pushed ahead with smaller class actions and in helping women process individual claims against Wal-Mart. And now, district judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco has rebuffed […]
Read this extensive post at Naked Capitalism entitled "'The Drugs Don't Work': How the Medical-Industrial Complex Systematically Suppresses Negativess Studies." Here's a very brief excerpt: [Although] the overt corruption of science at work in the drug arena … comes to light from time to time, often in the context of litigation, the lay public is […]
Continuing what seems to have become a trendy move for Republican attorneys-general, the states of Michigan, Oklahoma, and South Carolina are joining a legal challenge to another signature Obama law. Here's a helpful summary from the Blog of Legal Times: Three states have joined a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Dodd-Frank Act, complaining that […]
As you may know, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has recently named its Consumer Advocacy Board. Go here to read its members' names and bios. The Board will have its first public meeting in St. Louis on September 27. CFPB head Richard Cordray will speak (and presumably introduce the advisory board). Here's how the CFPB […]