The Pope address financial regulation

The Vatican called for "a new regulation of financial activities" in on Thursday a broad and harsh critique of the international financial system that emphasized the need for higher ethical standards since the housing market crash in the last decade. The new document released by the Vatican, approved by Pope Francis, calls out the post-2008 […]

Republican FTC Commissioners Name Payday Lender Lawyer to Run Consumer Protection Bureau Over Dem Commissioners’ Objections

by Jeff Sovern The NY Times has the story here. Excerpt: The director, Andrew M. Smith, has recently represented Facebook, Uber and Equifax — all companies with matters before the commission — and plans to recuse himself from dozens of cases now that he has been confirmed for the post. And in 2012, Mr. Smith was also […]

Industry Lawyer Concedes Arbitration Clauses Suppress Claims and Reduce Payments to Consumers

by Jeff Sovern Industry lawyer Thomas B. Hudson of Hudson Cook has authored Arbitration Agreements: Not Always Good All the Time for AutoDealer Today, in which he writes: An arbitration agreement is the dealer’s first and best line of defense against class-action lawsuits. If you think that isn’t reason enough, have a word with the many […]

Pound Civil Justice Institute Announces $10,000 Award for Civil Justice Scholarship

We have received the following announcement: The Pound Civil Justice Institute will make a Civil Justice Scholarship Award, bi-annually as possible, to recognize current scholarly legal research and writing focused on topics in civil justice, including access to justice and the benefits of the U.S. civil justice system, as well as the right to trial […]

Piché Paper on the Effectiveness of Class Action e-Notices

Catherine Piché of the University of Montreal has written The Coming Revolution in Class Action Notices: Reaching the Universe of Claimants Through Technologies. Here's the abstract: This paper will address whether a correlation may be drawn between the types and modalities of notices sent to class action members and the rate of compensation of these members, […]

Will Congress demand disclosure of litigation-funding sources?

Many of our readers are consumer class-action litigators or interested in litigation more generally. So I thought it was worth mentioning Senator Chuck Grassley's legislation, introduced last week, that would require disclosure of outside litigation funding in multi-district litigation and in class actions generally (that is, in class actions both inside and outside multi-district litigation). […]

Call for Papers for Symposium on Post-Secondary Education Non-Completion and Student Loan Debt

We've received the following call for papers: Submission Due Date:  Sunday, June 17, 2018 at midnight The Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy, Boston College Law School, and the National Consumer Law Center are pleased to announce a symposium on Post-Secondary Education Non-Completion and Student Loan Debt to take place at Boston College Law […]