Here. More than half the class members have submitted claims. Claimants are expected to recoup 80% of what they spent. The article attributes the high participation rate to the publicity the case garnered as well as the amounts individual claimants have at issue, as much as $20,000.
Category Archives: Unfair & Deceptive Acts & Practices (UDAP), including Discrimination
Prentiss Cox of Minnesota, Amy Widman of Northern Illinois, and Mark Totten of Michigan State have written Strategies of Public UDAP Enforcement, Harvard Journal on Legislation, Forthcoming. Here's the abstract: Laws protecting consumers from unfair and deceptive acts and practices – commonly called “UDAP” laws – have played a stunning role in recent years. As […]
by Jeff Sovern As we have discussed extensively, Wells Fargo opened millions of sham accounts in its customers' names. The CFPB responded by fining Wells $100 million. But under Financial Services Chair Jeb Hensarling's proposed Financial Choice Act 2 bill, the CFPB would have been powerless to do anything about Wells's scam. That's because, according […]
James C. Cooper of George Mason and Joanna Shepherd of Emory have written State Consumer Protection Acts: An Economic and Empirical Analysis. Here's the abstract: Consumer protection acts (CPAs) developed with the goal to protect American consumers from fraudulent, deceptive and unfair business practices. Initially, Congress, through the FTC Act, sought to define and deter […]
More here. Chapters that look as if they may be of particular interest to CL&P blog readers include The Enduring Dilemmas of Antifraud Regulation, The Shape-Shifting, Never-Changing World of Fraud, The Call for Investor and Consumer Protection (1930s to 1970s), Moving toward Caveat Venditor, Consumerism and the Reorientation of Antifraud Policy The Promise and Limits of […]
Former FTC Commissioner Joshua D. Wright of George Mason has written Federalism and the Rise of State Consumer Protection Law in the United States, in The Law and Economics of Federalism, Jonathan Klick, ed., Edward Elgar Publishing, Forthcoming. Here's the abstract: Starting in the 1960s, individual states began to adopt and enforce Consumer Protection Acts […]
ALI’s Proposed Restatement of Consumer Contracts – Perpetuating a Legal Fiction? By Dee Pridgen The members of the American Law Institute (ALI) are currently working on what may ultimately become “The Restatement of Consumer Contracts.” This project could provide an opportunity for real law reform. Indeed, the original goals of the ALI include adapting […]
by Jeff Sovern Some years ago, I wrote an article in which I speculated that disclosing to consumers that consumers rarely redeem rebates might cause consumers to disregard rebate offers. Better-known scholars, like Ian Ayres and Oren Bar-Gill, have expressed similar thoughts. Well, a new study suggests that the contrary is true. Molly Mercer of DePaul's […]