Senate Judiciary Committee holds hearing on proposal to eliminate business liability to consumers for infecting them with Covid-19

by Jeff Sovern The video and prepared testimony is here. If you have time to read only one, I recommend David Vladeck's excellent statement.  Though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has described this terrible proposal as a "red line" for future coronavirus bills, it appears he does not have the full support of his caucus. […]

New Duke resource on the mortgage lending that led to the Great Recession

Guest Post from Edward Balleisen: Readers of this blog may be interested in a new website, American Predatory Lending (APL), which explores the state-level dynamics of mortgage lending in the run-up to 2008, with an initial focus on North Carolina.  Law professors who teach about consumer law and/or banking law will find a range of resources that […]

Brian Galle: Well-heeled universities could prevent harm to workers and students in the current crisis if they spent some of their massive endowments, rather than establishing austerity plans

Law prof Brian Galle has written If Not Now, When: Why Won’t Universities Spend Their Money?  In it, he explains why well-heeled universities should not curtail spending during economic downturns. Rather, he says, it makes sense for those schools to spend their money now, protecting the schools' workers and students in the process.

Da Lin and Daniel Schwarcz call for car insurance rate cuts while driving is down so much

Da Lin and Daniel Schwarcz have written an op-ed, States Must Act To Cut Auto Insurance Rates During COVID-19 for Law360 (free access during the pandemic). They explain "Auto insurers are experiencing a massive windfall as a result of the coronavirus, but they are not returning a fair portion of those gains to consumers. And […]

Foohey, Jiménez & Odinet Paper: The Folly of Credit As Pandemic Relief

Pamela Foohey of Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Dalié Jiménez of California, Irvine and Christopher K. Odinet of Oklahoma have written The Folly of Credit As Pandemic Relief 68 UCLA L. Rev. Disc. __ (2020 Forthcoming). Here's the abstract: Within weeks of the coronavirus pandemic appearing in the United States, the American economy came to […]

Report: Debt collection suits dominate state court dockets

A new report from Pew describes how debt collection lawsuits have transformed state courts. Among the report's findings: Fewer people are using the courts for civil cases. Debt claims grew to dominate state civil court dockets in recent decades. People sued for debts rarely have legal representation, but those who do tend to have better […]

Shmuel Becher on design principles for effective consumer protection legislation

Shmuel I. Becher of New Zeeland's Victoria University of Wellington has written The Puzzle of Effective Consumer Protection Legislation: Challenges, Key Lessons and Design Principles, in The Law and Economics of Regulation, Mathis & Torr eds (forthcoming Springer, 2021). Here is the abstract: Legislation, even when well-intended, sometimes fails to provide the desired results. By […]

Lawsuit alleges Dep’t of Education is illegally garnishing student borrowers’ wages

Yesterday, on behalf of a class of student borrowers, the National Consumer Law Center and Student Defense, with the support of the Student Borrower Protection Center, filed a class action lawsuit against the Department of Education and Secretary Betsy DeVos in federal district court in DC. The suit alleges that the Department is illegally garnishing […]