It’s not often (or ever) that I would post an amicus brief on e-discovery, but I’m making an exception today. Brian Morrison, a partner at Tadler Law, drafted an excellent trial court amicus on the narrow issue of e-discovery of emails that use hyperlinks (an increasing practice) instead of PDFs that are actually attached. It’s […]
Howell E. Jackson and Colin Mark, both of Harvard, have written May the Executive Branch Forgive Student Loan Debt Without Further Congressional Action? Here's the abstract: On April 1, 2021, the Biden Administration announced that Secretary of Education Michael Cardona will consider whether the President has legal authority to forgive up to $50,000 per debtor in […]
As noted in Jeff Sovern’s post last week, the Supreme Court ruled last Thursday in the case of Facebook v. Duguid that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) does not apply to robocalls and robotexts sent to cell phones unless they are sent from equipment that uses a random or sequential number generator. The decision […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today proposed extending the effective date of two debt-collection rules that were finalized in 2020 and currently go into effect in November 2021. The CFPB proposes the delay to give affected parties more time to comply due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The proposal is here. One of the two […]
In a string of rulings over the past decade, the U.S. Supreme Court has made it more difficult to sue corporations that operate nationwide unless suit is brought in the states where they are incorporated or have their principal places of business. But in its March 25, 2021 ruling in Ford Motor Company v. Montana […]
Eric Goldman of Santa Clara has written (illustrated?) The Crisis of Online Contracts (as Told in 10 Memes). Here is the disappointingly memeless abstract: This essay explains the “crisis” of online contracts, the legal fiction that consumers have assented to online contract terms when we have ample empirical evidence that they didn’t really mean to […]
by Jeff Sovern So says an indentified financial services lobbyist, quoted in Neil Haggerty's article in The American Banker, Will Senate vote on CFPB chief come down to tiebreaker? (behind paywall but available on Lexis). Here's the relevant excerpt: A financial services lobbyist added that most Republicans likely won't vote to confirm any person nominated by […]
Here, in Facebook v. Duguid. In other words, if all the device does is call numbers that you specificaly tell it to call, it's not an ATDS within the meaning of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
by Jeff Sovern Yesterday, Acting CFPB Director Dave Uejio posted an item to the CFPPB Blog that suggests that the Bureau may rekindle its former payday lending rule in some form. Here's the post in full: The CFPB is acutely aware of consumer harms in the small dollar lending market, and is particularly concerned with […]
Mike Saunders, director of military and consumer policy at Veterans Education Success, warns in Millitary.com today that service members and veterans need to be wary of new forms of credit-like products that have popped up in recent years, especially "paycheck advance" products and Income Share Agreements. He explains that current legal protections may not cover […]