Category Archives: Uncategorized

Senate Expected to Vote Soon on Confirmation of Otting, Former Banker, to Regulate Banks as Comptroller

by Jeff Sovern Bloomberg is reporting in a story headlined Senate Clears Way for Ex-Mnuchin Deputy to Lead Bank Regulator, that: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has filed a motion to kick off debate and an eventual vote to appoint Otting as head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. It will likely take […]

Law Profs Sought to Judge ABA Law Student Consumer Law Writing Competition

The ABA Antitrust Consumer Protection Committee is seeking law professors to judge a law student writing competition on he Tension Between Truth in Advertising Restrictions and  First Amendment Free Speech Rights. Submissions are to be due by  April 1, 2018 and the award is to be decided by July, 2018. If you are interested, please email […]

Most student-loan fraud claims involve for-profits colleges

A new report by The Century Foundation based on analysis of data from the Department of Education shows that students who attended for-profit colleges filed more than 98 percent of the requests for student loan forgiveness alleging fraud by their schools.The study is based on nearly 100,000 applications for loan forgiveness based on "borrower defense" […]

American Banker: Dems’ brighter 2018 chances could upend bank priorities

by Jeff Sovern Here (the content appears to be free). Excerpt: After the GOP captured the U.S. House majority in 2010, Republicans quickly went to work trying to * * * undercut the Dodd-Frank Act and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, among other things. A Democratic victory in 2018 would likely have a reverse effect, […]

Will ERISA class actions over illegal fees and retirement plan mismanagement be killed off by class-action arbitration bans?

That's the topic of this piece by Jacklyn Willie (possibly behind a pay wall) which discusses this Chamber of Commerce amicus brief filed in an important Ninth Circuit appeal. The suit was filed against the University of Southern California by its employees over the legality of fees charged through USC's employee retirement plan. Willie explains that The central question […]

Texas Anti-SLAPP Motion Cannot Be Evaded by Voluntary Dismissal

by Paul Alan Levy Prestigious Pets, the Dallas-area pet-sitting company that faced a blizzard of public criticism after it invoked a non-disparagement clause as a basis for suing a husband and wife in small claims court after the wife posted over a mildly critical Yelp review of the company’s procedures and the resulting overfeeding a […]

Positive-value claims and class-action deterrence

It's often said that a class action makes sense as a tool for aggregating negative-value claims (claims that even if litigated successfully on an individual basis result in a loss to the plaintiff). In Deterrence and Aggregate Litigation, law prof Keith Hylton looks at positive-value claims and finds that optimal deterrence is served by class actions […]

New book about the CFPB and its future

Larry Kirsch and Gregory Squires have written Meltdown: The Financial Crisis, Consumer Protection, and the Road Forward. Here's how  the authors describe the book's 5 key features: Presents the first comprehensive examination of the CFPB that identifies its successes during its first five years of operation and addresses the challenges the bureau now faces Exposes the alarming […]