by Paul Alan Levy Back in June 2019, the last time I had occasion to write about Mathew Higbee’s bullying pursuit of copyright claims against alleged infringers, he had just backed away from a confrontation on the part of one of the longtime members of his stable of clients, Quang-Tuan Luong, and had, indeed, suggested […]
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In May, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed new Fair Debt Collection Practices Act rules. In this op-ed, Jennifer Wagner (of Mountain State Justice) and Linda Frame (of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy) explain why the CFPB's proposed rules, issued under a law meant to curb debt-collection harassment, actually authorize debt-collection harassment. […]
The Federal Trade Commission has issued a staff report on class-action notices, redress methods, claims rates, and check-cashing rates based on the agency's survey of the results in 149 consumer class actions. The FTC has put together this home page on the report, which contains links to related information. Consistent with other data and anecdotal […]
That's the title of this piece in The Hill by law prof Lauren Willis. WIllis's bio notes that "[s]he is a leading critic of the use of financial education, disclosures, and 'nudges' (default settings) in consumer policy-making." Willis's Hill piece applies that critique to the regulatory approach of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the direction […]
ProPublica has a new report out today called "The Deadly Race: How Amazon Hooked America on Fast Delivery While Avoiding Responsibility for Crashes." The report explains that "Amazon has built a huge logistics operation in recent years to get more goods to customers’ homes in less and less time. As it moves to reduce its […]
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program encourages graduates to work in public service jobs by forgiving federal student loan balances for borrowers who have made 10 years of payments while in certain public service jobs. In 2018, after the Department of Education forgave few loans, Congress temporarily expanded the program to include more borrowers. According […]
Last year, the California legislature passed the California Consumer Privacy Act, which grants internet users the right to see the personal information that companies collect about them and stop it from being sold. The law applies only to residents of California, but privacy advocates hope it might serve as a model for other states or […]
The Ninth Circuit today issued its decision in Animal Legal Defense Fund v. USDA. Here's the court's summary of the decision: The panel reversed in part and affirmed in part the district court’s dismissal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction of plaintiffs’ action against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, alleging claims under the Freedom of […]
Law prof Adam Levitin has written The Fast and the Usurious: Putting the Brakes on Auto Lending Abuses. Here is the abstract: The car loan market is rife with consumer abuses: inflated pricing, discriminatory lending, and a variety of deceptions and scams. These abuses all stem from the dealer-centric nature of the auto finance market […]
Yesterday, in Davis v. Oasis Legal Finance Operating Company, the Eleventh Circuit struck down contractual forum-selection and class-action-waiver clauses as contrary to public policy. In Davis, a class of borrowers sued lenders, claiming that their loan agreements violated Georgia usury laws. The lenders sought to tank the case on the basis of contractual forum-selection and […]