Horton article finds plaintiffs less likely to win in forced remote arbitration

David Horton of California, Davis has written Forced Remote Arbitration, 108 Cornell Law Review (2022). Here’s the abstract: Courts responded to COVID-19 by going remote. In early 2020, as lockdown orders swept through the country, virtual hearings—which once were rare—became common. This shift generated fierce debate about how video trials differ from in-person proceedings. Now, […]

NY Times: Navient settlement with the states does not help borrowers who are not in default

Here. Excerpt: After years of struggling to make payments that hardly put a dent in the loans she took out to attend a now defunct arts school, Victoria Linssen saw a glimmer of hope. A deal last month between 39 states and Navient, a student lending giant accused of unfairly ensnaring borrowers like her, would […]

Consumer Law Scholars Make Wide-Ranging Proposals to CFPB

The effort was led by Berkeley's Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice and resulted in production of a series of short memoranda available here. Topics covered include discrimination, arbitration, income share agreements, BNPL, substitution effects of regulation, disclosures, overdraft protections, and more.

Study finds consumer medical data breaches can cause consumers to switch providers and increase gym visits

Junyuan Ke and Weiguang Wang, both of the University of Rochester – Simon Business School and Natasha Zhang Foutz, Associate Professor of Commerce at the University of Virginia, have written Heterogeneous Consumer Response and Mitigation toward Healthcare Data Breach: Insights from Location Big Data. Here is the abstract: Data breaches pose grave dangers to consumers, […]

CFPB reforms the process for submitting petitions for rulemaking

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today announced reforms in the process for submitting citizen petitions, through which members of the public can request that the agency initiate a new rulemaking, amend an existing rule, or repeal a rule. The CFPB will post petitions on public dockets for review and comment. The CFPB's announcement is here. […]

SBPC’s Mark Huelsman report: the student loan IDR system creates a debt trap

Mark Huelsman of the Student Borrower Protection Center has written Driving Runaway Debt: How IDR’s Current Design Buries Borrowers Under Billions of Dollars in Unaffordable Interest. Here's the abstract: This report highlights how the design of the main protection meant to deliver affordability to federal student loan borrowers, Income-Driven Repayment (IDR), ignores the widespread effects that […]

Anita Allen Article on Race and Online Privacy

Anita L. Allen of Penn has written Dismantling the Black Opticon: Race Equity and Online Privacy and Data Protection Reform, forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal. Here’s the abstract: In the opening decades of the 21st century popular online platforms rapidly transformed the world. These platforms have come with benefits, but a heavy price to […]

DC’s $4 million settlement with predatory online lender will compensate thousands of District consumers

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine today announced that Elevate Credit, Inc., predatory online lender, will pay at least $3.3 million to refund over 2,500 District consumers who were misleadingly marketed high-cost loans and lines of credit, waive over $300,000 in interest owed by those consumers, and pay $450,000 to the District. The company […]