Over the past couple of years, there has been a fair amount of controversy about the role played by Trump Administration official Mick Mulvaney in a land deal gone bad and his efforts to manipulate the law to protect himself from losses while dumping the losses on his investors. The controversy came up during his […]

Late last year, I wrote about an abusive subpoena that California Congressman Devin Nunes was pursuing in Virginia state court, seeking to identify the owner of a satirical Twitter account that makes fun of Nunes, referring to his family history in dairy farming, by using the Twitter handle “@Devin Cow” and including various puns referring […]

The National Consumer Law Center has issued this press release, entitled "CFPB Fails to Protect Consumers From Abusive Collection of Time-Barred Debts (Again)," which, among other things, castigates the CFPB for failing to flat-out "ban collection of time-barred debt in and out of court."

The Federal Trade Commission reports that consumers reported losing $201 million to romance scams in 2019—up nearly 40% since 2018. The total reflects complaint submitted to the FTC by more than 25,000 consumers.

Law profs Dalie Jimenez and Jonathan Glater have written Student Debt is a Civil Rights Issue: The Case for Debt Relief and Higher Education Reform for the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. Here is the abstract:  For an ever-growing number of students aspiring to higher education, borrowing is essential. Yet the burdens of indebtedness […]

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has published Five ways to recognize a Social Security scam. Last summer, the agency warned in this short memo about the increasing number of scams aimed at getting social-security numbers or benefits. It explained how to identify scams (as opposed to legit inquiries from the Social Security Administration) and how consumers […]

Isn't that why the HR director at Wells Fargo, in explaining why his company was getting rid of forced arbitration of sexual-harassment claims, observed that "Wells Fargo has zero tolerance for sexual harassment"? So, for really bad stuff, it's only fair to let people go to court. Is that it? Does the company tolerate just […]

Law prof CJ Ryan has written Paying for Law School: Law Student Loan Indebtedness and Career Choices. Here is the abstract: Student loan debt has reached crisis levels, topping $1.64 trillion dollars this year and surpassing credit card debt to become the second largest source of debt held by Americans. When discussing student loan debt, […]

It's no secret that many companies use arbitration agreements with class-action bans not because they want to arbitrate claims, but because they want to avoid claims altogether. When large numbers of consumers or employees share a claim and can't bring a class action, defendants can usually expect that few if any will come forward and […]