by Jeff Sovern Twice a year, CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger testifies before the House Financial Services Committee about the Bureau's Semi-Annual Report. A committee member I always look forward to hearing from is Katie Porter, a former law professor at UC-Irvine, among other schools, with an impressive record of consumer law scholarship and accomplishment. Representative […]
The 12-page decision, by a per curiam panel composed of Judges Henderson, Tatel, and Griffith, is here. The decision includes this paragraph: The Members [of Congress] can, and likely will, continue to use their weighty voices to make their case to the American people, their colleagues in the Congress and the President himself, all of […]
It is with deep regret and disappointment we must inform you that due to events beyond our control, the May 29-30, 2020 Teaching Consumer Law Conference has been cancelled. It has been rescheduled for May 21-22, 2021. We strongly believe that the Conference provides a unique experience for those teaching or interested in teaching consumer […]
by Jeff Sovern A recent NY Times article, Chaos at Chain Pharmacies Is Putting Patients at Risk, reminded me of how the Wells Fargo quotas drove Wells employees to open unauthorized accounts. There's a lot in the article, but here are two excerpts: [CVS] Staff members were supposed to persuade 65 percent of patients picking […]
Arbitration clauses, ubiquitous in financial and telecom services, are increasingly used by sellers of consumer products such as dishwashers and televisions. To get a sense of how often, Consumer Reports looked at the top-selling brands in the 10 product categories receiving the most traffic on its website, plus two types of products designed for safety: […]
Brady Williams has written Unconscionability as a Sword: The Case for an Affirmative Cause of Action, 107 Calif. L. Rev. 2015 (2019). Here's the abstract: Consumers are drowning in a sea of one-sided fine print. To combat contractual overreach, consumers need an arsenal of effective remedies. To that end, the doctrine of unconscionability provides a […]
Take a look at All-Caps by law profs Yonathan Arbel and Andrew Toler. Here is the abstract: A hallmark of consumer contracts is long blocks of capitalized text. Courts and legislators believe that such “all-caps” clauses improve the quality of consumer consent and thus they will often require the capitalization of certain key terms in […]
Shmuel I. Becher of the Victoria University of Wellington and Uri Benoliel of the College of Law and Business – Ramat Gan Law School have written Sneak in Contracts: An Empirical Perspective. Here's the abstract: Consumer contracts are a pervasive legal tool that governs much of our daily activities. In spite of – or perhaps due […]
A column in the Washington Post today explains Facebook's new "Off-Facebook Activity" tool and suggests privacy settings you can change. Ever suspect the Facebook app is listening to you? What we now know is even creepier. Facebook is giving us a new way to glimpse just how much it knows about us: On Tuesday, the […]
Take a look at the Seventh Circuit's January 24 decision in Bigger v. Facebook, Inc., No. 19-1944. The Seventh Circuit succinctly sets out the dispute and its holding: This case presents the question whether a court may authorize notice to individuals [who are putative members of a Fair Labor Standards Act "collective" action and] who […]