Category Archives: Uncategorized

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 […]

Does Credit Card Regulation Increase the Availability of Credit Cards, Despite Industry Claims?

by Jeff Sovern The banking industry opposed the Credit Card Act of 2009  on the ground that it would reduce the availability of credit. We heard the same objection to 2010's Dodd-Frank Act.  So you might think that it would be hard to get a credit card or to use one to borrow these days.  […]

Consumerist.com ends its run

Consumerist.com posted on Monday that the website has posted its last post: This is our last post on Consumerist.com. We’re deeply proud of all the work we’ve done on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by secretive cable companies to pushing for action against dodgy payday lenders. We’ve had a tremendous run as a standalone […]