More on the failure of disclosure laws: Chen paper explores how Australian payday lenders obscure mandatory warnings

Vivien Chen of the Monash University – Department of Business Law & Taxation has written Online Payday Lenders: Trusted Friends or Debt Traps? 43 University of New South Wales Law Journal (Advance 2020). Here's the abstract: The recent Senate inquiry into credit and hardship underscored the prevalence of predatory conduct in the payday lending industry. […]

Interesting environmental-law-oriented nuisance case from the Third Circuit

I thought our readers might want to look at an interesting new decision from the Third Circuit about common-law nuisance under Pennsylvania law. The decision is Baptiste v. Bethlehem Landfill Company. The first two paragraphs of the opinion offer a synopsis: Robin and Dexter Baptiste brought an action against the Bethlehem Landfill Company on behalf […]

Critique of the ALI’s draft Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts

Law prof Mark Budnitz has written The Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts: The American Law Institute's Impossible Dream. Here is the abstract: The American Law Institute has been attempting to write a Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts since 2012. The proposed Restatement has gone through ten drafts and has generated considerable […]

Court Denies Injunction to Enforce the Trump Family Nondisclosure Agreement

by Paul Alan Levy The New York state trial judge who initially granted a temporary restraining order against both Mary Trump and Simon & Schuster declined late today to extend that order into a preliminary injunction. Faced with a welter of arguments put forward by both the defendants in the case as well as by […]

NCLC statement on CFPB’s new rule rescinding payday loan protections

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today announced a final rule rescinding payday loans protections that had been issued in October 2017. Among the provisions rescinded are those limiting unaffordable loans that trap families in cycles of debt. The CFPB also announced that it will implement the provisions of the payday loan rule that prevent lenders, […]

In light of the Supreme Court decision, CFPB ratifies earlier agency actions

As established by the Dodd-Frank Act in 2020, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was headed by a director who could the President could remove only for cause (inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office). The CFPB’s first director was appointed on January 4, 2012. On June 29, 2020, the Supreme Court held in Seila […]

Effort to Suppress Trump Niece’s Book Shows the Need to Construe NDA’s Narrowly

by Paul Alan Levy The lawsuit filed by Robert Trump against his niece, Mary Trump, seeking to block her from publishing a book that apparently has several damning facts to disclose about Robert’s brother, and Mary Trump’s uncle, our Dear Leader Donald J. Trump, is based on a non-disclosure clause that was part of the […]

“Severability” to the Rescue Again: A Further Note on Today’s Supreme Court Robocalling Decision

Steve Gardner has given a great and succinct summary of todays decision in Barr v. AAPC. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act lives, minus its obnoxious exception for government debt collection robocalls. What's not to like about that bottom line? I want to make an additional point about the significance of the decision. For the second […]