The Senate just passed Senate Joint Resolution 47, with Vice President Mike Pence casting the deciding vote, to repeal the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's rule barring class-action bans in consumer financial contracts. Republican Senators John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) and Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) joined all 48 Democratic Senators in voting against the measure. The House already passed the resolution. […]
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The Ninth Circuit handed down an excellent decision on October 20, resolving an open question as to whether a class action plaintiff can seek future injunctive relief when she won’t get fooled again. This often arises with retail purchases, where a duped consumer who is on the ball enough to be a class representative is […]
The Treasury Department's report is called Limiting Consumer Choice, Expanding Costly Litigation: An Analysis of the CFPB Arbitration Rule. The first sentence of the report's conclusion (on page 17 of the report) would be laughable if the topic — access to the courts — were not so serious: "The Bureau’s Rule would upend a century of federal […]
Guest post by Emily Martin, General Counsel and Vice President for Workplace Justice. National Women's Law Center Fox News. Sterling Jewelers. Wells Fargo. What do they all have in common? For years, they successfully kept corporate wrongdoing secret, through forced arbitration. Buried in the fine print of employment contracts and consumer agreements, forced arbitration clauses prohibit you […]
That's the topic of The Bold Ambition of Justice Scalia's Arbitration Jurisprudence: Keep Workers and Consumers Out of Court by law prof. Katherine Stone. Here's the abstract: Arbitration clauses have become a pervasive feature of modern life. The expanding scope of arbitration has become a cause for alarm amongst consumer and worker advocates, who see it as […]
The New York Times reports that "Wells Fargo engaged in unfair and deceptive practices, failed to properly manage risks and hasn’t set aside enough money to pay back the customers it harmed, according to a confidential report by federal regulators." "The report, prepared by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and reviewed by […]
We received the following announcement: ABA Section of Antitrust Law Consumer Protection Committee Volunteer Opportunities for Law Students The Consumer Protection Committee is the ABA’s premier group for developments in the law of privacyand data security, false advertising, deceptive marketing, and unfair trade practices, providing timelyupdates on law enforcement, rulemakings, and business guidance from the FTC, […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's student-loan ombudsman has issued his annual report. It finds that while the agency has made progress in making the student-loan repayment process fairness, serious problems remain. [C]omplaints by student loan borrowers have driven actions that have produced more than $750 million in relief for student loan borrowers and strengthened the student loan […]
The Washington Post reports that the Federal Trade and 12 state attorneys general have formed a task force to crack down on student debt relief scams. "The federal-state initiative, dubbed Operation Game of Loans, is responsible for five cases against companies, such as Student Debt Doctor and American Student Loan Consolidators, accused of misleading borrowers about their ability to lower […]
I don't post every article about the Consumer Financial Protection bureau rule barring financial services companies from using forced arbitration provisions to impose class-action bans on consumers. But I wanted to pass along this one by CFPB director Richard Cordray responding very directly to a couple of the rule's opponents.