Study shows businesses benefit from using unenforceable contract terms

Meirav Furth-Matzkin and Roseanna Sommers, both of Chicago, have written Consumer Psychology and the Problem of Fine Print Fraud, 72 STANFORD LAW REVIEW___ (Forthcoming). Here's the abstract: This Article investigates how laypeople respond to consumer contracts that are formed as a result of fraud. Across four studies, we show that contrary to the prevailing wisdom in […]

Some big problems with the CFPB’s proposal to allow debt collectors to leave limited-content messages over the phone

by Jeff Sovern The more I think about the CFPB's recent proposal to allow debt collectors to leave limited-content messages over the phone, the more I think the proposal has real problems. The proposal would allow debt collectors to leave voicemails or oral messages with whomever answered the phone. To qualify as a limited-content message, […]

Will New York catch up to Mississippi in protecting consumers?

by Jeff Sovern Many states allow their consumers to sue misbehaving companies for unfair practices, including red and purple states like Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia, states that we normally don't think of as being in the vanguard of consumer protection.  This power can be important in protecting consumers. For example, the […]

Senators ask CFPB to reconsider debt collection proposal

More than 20 U.S. senators are calling on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to reconsider a proposal to allow debt collectors to send unlimited texts and emails to consumers, and to call consumers seven times a week per debt, USA Today reports. “By allowing debt collectors to send consumers unlimited text messages and emails without […]

New challenges for Mathew Higbee and his clients

by Paul Alan Levy About a month ago, I blogged about a new variant in Matthew Higbee’s high-volume copyright enforcement practice on behalf of photographers, in which he was pursuing the hosts of online forums where users had posted copyrighted photographs or deep links to copyrighted photographs, taking advantage of those hosts who had failed […]

Linda Fisher & Judith Fox Book: The Foreclosure Echo: How the Hardest Hit Have Been Left Out of the Economic Recovery

It's to be published next month by Cambridge and sounds like an important contribution. Here's a description: The Foreclosure Echo tells the story of the ordinary people whose quest for the American dream was crushed in the foreclosure crisis when they were threatened with losing their homes. The authors, Linda E. Fisher and Judith Fox […]

The rule of law in multi-district litigation

I think our readers might be interested in The Rule of Law in Multidistrict Litigation by law prof David Noll. Here's the abstract: From the Deepwater Horizon disaster to the opioid crisis, multidistrict litigation — or simply MDL — has become the preeminent forum for devising solutions to the most difficult problems in the federal […]

Supreme Court decides Class Action Fairness Act removal case, Home Depot v. Jackson

The Supreme Court decided Home Depot v. Jackson, No. 17-1471, this morning about whether a third-party counterclaim defendant can remove a case to federal court under general federal removal provisions or under the Class Action Fairness Act's removal provision, 28 U.S.C. § 1453. The Court held, in a 5-4 opinion by Justice Thomas, that removal […]