The Sixth Circuit held today in Keen v. Helson that because the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act's text gives a right to sue only to a "borrower," someone who signs the mortgage but does not sign the mortgage loan with the lender is not a "borrower" (and so can't sue under RESPA).
by Jeff Sovern Many consumer laws require that businesses make "clear and conspicuous" disclosures. See, e.g., Reg Z, 12 C.F.R. 1026.17(a)(1) (closed-end loans). But increasingly, consumers are obtaining loans through mobile phones. How can any disclosure on those tiny screens be clear and conspicuous? When the Fed thought about this issue back in 2007, it […]
Matthew A. Bruckner of Howard has written Preventing Predation & Encouraging Innovation in Fintech Lending. Here is the abstract: More than 20 years ago, IBM's Deep Blue vanquished chess grandmaster and reigning world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, in a pair of best-of-six matches. Since then, numerous companies have invested large sums of money to develop additional […]
This Washington Post article by Faiz Siddiqui explains that "Tesla is racing to be first to the market with a self-driving car made for the masses, promising to send as soon as this year an over-the-air software update that will turn hundreds of thousands of its vehicles into robo-cars." Yet, "a dozen transportation officials and […]
by Jeff Sovern Norm Silber of Hosfstra has pointed out to me that the New York legislature has passed two consumer protection bills that await Governor Cuomo's signature. One, S03704, would amend New York's existing Plain Language Law to require that consumer contracts involving up to $250,000 be written "in a clear and coherent manner […]
In a lengthy article today, the Detroit Free Press reports: Ford Motor Co. knowingly launched two low-priced, fuel-efficient cars with defective transmissions and continued selling the troubled Focus and Fiesta despite thousands of complaints and an avalanche of repairs, a Free Press investigation found. The cars, many of which randomly lose power on freeways and have […]
On Tuesday, AT&T became the first major US wireless company to automatically block robocalls for its customers. The free service comes after a June ruling by the Federal Communications Commission that allows phone service providers to offer call-blocking on an opt-out basis. CNN has the story, here.
Under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACTA), retailers are prohibited from printing more than the last 5 digits of a credit card number or the expiration date on a purchase receipt. The law was enacted to combat identity theft, because receipts other could provide criminals with easy access to credit and […]
Our readers will want to read the Ninth Circuit's decision in Blair v. Rent-A-Center, written by Circuit Judge William Fletcher. Judge Fletcher's intro paragraph sums up the decision nicely: In McGill v. Citibank, N.A., 393 P.3d 85 (Cal. 2017), the California Supreme Court decided that a contractual agreement purporting to waive a party’s right to […]
Following up on our post a few days ago about the petition by #REPRESENT asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate "surveillance scoring" — where retailers use consumer information collected by data brokers to figure out how much to charge individual customers. Go here to read #REPRESENT's press release. And go here, here, and here […]